The Center for Public Integrity

Massachusetts juveniles incarcerated for life without parole will likely wait well into 2013 or beyond for a chance at reduced prison time as lawyers, prosecutors, legislators and advocates carefully craft a strategy to bring the state into compliance with new federal law outlawing the mandatory sentence.

Massachusetts has not been as quick to act as states like North Carolina and Iowa, which have implemented new laws since the U.S. Supreme Court in June banned mandatory juvenile life without parole for murder. While change is expected in Massachusetts, either through the courts or legislation, no clear answers have yet emerged on how to handle new cases and review past convictions involving killers under 18.

Governor Deval Patrick’s point person on the issue wants life without parole banned entirely for juveniles, whether mandatory or not. Middlesex County District Attorney Gerald T. Leone Jr. wants teenage killers to serve a minimum of 35 years before becoming eligible for parole, while the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association has reached no consensus on a solution. Meanwhile, the state’s public defender’s office has mobilized and trained dozens of defense lawyers to potentially work with as many as 80 inmates and accused teen killers in Massachusetts who could be affected by the high court ruling.

The 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama banned the mandatory sentence, imposed in 29 states, as “cruel and unusual punishment,” but still gives judges’ discretion to impose life without parole for teen killers.

A new report on solitary confinement of minors includes harrowing descriptions of the psychological and physical impact ‘solitary’ has on young people, as well as surprising revelations about why some authorities resort to isolating juveniles.

In “Growing Up Locked Down,” the groups Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union report that a substantial number of detained juveniles minors are placed in solitary confinement as punishment, or as part of their rehabilitation plans – or even for their own protection. Some custodians, researchers found, say they put juveniles who are in adult lockups into solitary confinement as a way to protect them from attacks by adult inmates.

Some minors interviewed said they were segregated in juvenile facilities for the same reason – to protect them from threats – and let out only for a couple of hours a day.

Released in October, the report is based on research and interviews conducted in local and state detention facilities in Florida, Colorado, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. Investigators also corresponded with confined minors in 14 other states.

“Because young people are still developing, traumatic experiences like solitary confinement may have a profound effect on their chance to rehabilitate and grow,” researchers said. Minors described experiencing hallucinations, cutting themselves with staples or razors and attempting suicide multiple times. Some said they were denied contact with loved ones while in ‘solitary,’ which increased their depression.

The report also says that a Pennsylvania prison official told researchers that many minors in solitary confinement are prescribed sleeping aids and other medications to help them “cope and reduce anxiety.”

Not every Congressional  Republican is joining the GOP rush to mend fences with Latino voters by  embracing  the pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, for example — one of Capitol Hill’s  immigration hawks — made it plain after President Obama’s election victory that he doesn’t approve of the chatter from his party’s “establishment” on this issue. “Obama voters chose dependency over Liberty,” King said in a tweet. “Now establishment R's want citizenship for illegals. You can't beat Santa Claus with amnesty.”

King’s attitudes are significant, given that he’s a member of the House Judiciary Committee and vice chairman of its Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement.  Judging from an interaction with one of his constituents, Bethany Gonzalez of Denison, Iowa, King believes in maintaining a hard line, even if U.S. citizens say some immigration policies have turned them into collateral damage.

Gonzalez recently spoke to the Center for Public Integrity about her attempts to persuade King to help her with a life-altering immigration problem. Gonzalez was desperate because immigration penalties she had no idea existed had forced her husband out of the U.S. in 2008, and she and their two children faced prolonged emotional and financial hardship.

King told her she had the option of moving to Mexico.

Pedro Rios was nine years old when he arrived to the United States, and now he’s a Republican candidate for California’s state legislature.

“I’m an immigrant, like many, who has worked to succeed and I’m living the American Dream,” the farmer, now 39, says in a Facebook post advertising his run at the 32^nd Assembly District in the Bakersfield area. 

But what Rios consistently avoided saying — until late October — was that he started out as a young illegal immigrant who was smuggled as a child over the border from Mexico.

Rios didn’t become a legal resident until he was a teenager and was able to take advantage of an amnesty in the 1986 immigration reform passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan. He became a U.S. citizen in 1996.

As Bakersfield area press reports have indicated, the disclosure has proved awkward for Rios — who opposes the DREAM Act for undocumented youths to earn legal status — as well as for Rios’ local Republican champions.  

Not least among Rios’ champions is Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the staunch conservative from Bakersfield who is the House of Representatives’ majority whip.

McCarthy is at the top of the list of Rios’ endorsements in this region, where Democrats have gained strength among an increasing Latino population.

Arguing that African-American and disabled students’ rights are being systematically violated, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an unusual lawsuit Wednesday against the state of Mississippi, Lauderdale County and the city of Meridian.

The suit alleges that the state, county and city “help to operate a school-to-prison pipeline in which the rights of children in Meridian are repeatedly and routinely violated,” said a Department of Justice press release.  “As a result, children in Meridian have been systematically incarcerated for allegedly committing minor offenses, including school disciplinary infractions, and are punished disproportionately without due process of law.”

The department alleges that some disabled students’ behavior intervention plans prescribe “juvenile detention center” to deal with school discipline problems,  and that students have been handcuffed and arrested at school and placed in detention for days at a time – 80 miles away -- without sufficient legal representation or a timely hearing.

The department also alleges that students who have been arrested can end up incarcerated for parole violations involving minor school infractions, including  wearing the wrong color socks, having a shirt untucked, using vulgar language or being tardy.

The U.S. Department of Education announced Friday that it has reached a major agreement with school officials in Oakland, Calif. that allows federal monitoring of the district’s efforts to curb out-of-school suspensions of its African American students.

“This is not about blame,” said Russlynn Ali, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. In a Friday conference call with reporters, Ali said the purpose of her office’s drive to reform school discipline “to keep students in class, and to ensure they keep learning.”

A May report by the Urban Strategies Council, an Oakland community-organizing and research group, drilled down on Oakland’s record of suspensions. Researchers found that African American boys were only 17 percent of the Oakland Unified School District’s population but 42 percent of all suspensions. Black males were suspended at six times the rate of white boys across the district in the 2010-2011 school year.

The Urban Strategies Council also found that among black male students suspended multiple times, 44 percent were removed from school solely for the infraction of “defiance of authority.” The district in 2010-2011 lost tens of thousands of dollars in “daily attendance” money from government sources because students were out on suspension.

The state of Florida  plans to close a large privately-run juvenile offender home that a group of public defenders alleged was rife with problems. State officials say the decision to close the Thompson Academy as of Jan. 4, 2013, is not related to the public defenders’ longstanding allegations of poor supervision and treatment of wards. Instead, officials say, the 154-bed facility’s large size doesn’t match the type of rehabilitation the state is pursuing.

Thompson Academy, a low-security facility in Broward County, is run by Youth Services International, a private company that holds $81.8 million in Florida government contracts to operate seven juvenile offender facilities and programs. The company runs juvenile programs in other states as well, and describes itself as “the premier provider in the youth care industry.”        

C.J. Drake, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, told the Center for Public Integrity Thursday that the state is “moving to smaller residential programs” and Thompson Academy doesn’t fit that profile.  “Controversy in the past has nothing to do with the decision,” Drake said.

In June, as the Center for Public Integrity reported, Broward County public defenders filed an unusual petition — for a writ of habeas corpus — asking a Florida state court for an order to remove and stop sending juvenile offenders to Thompson.

Gordon Weekes, Broward County chief assistant public defenders, said at the time that wards appeared to have suffered abuses, including intimation, physical harm and the use of food as “currency” to reward certain behavior.

When Minerva Dickson first saw her high school she thought it looked like a prison. After her first week, she says, she realized how right her initial impressions were.

Every day when she arrived at the Thomas Jefferson Campus in Brownsville, Brooklyn, she waited in a line that snaked out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. She would shuffle up two steps passing beneath words from Abraham Lincoln inscribed on the neo-classical pediment: “Let Reverence for the Laws Become the Political Religion of the Nation.”

Next, she reached into her pocket for her identification card and slid it through a machine. When it recognized her, it blurted an approving beep and a green light would flash. When it didn’t, the machine made an abrasive buzzing noise and lit up red.

Clear of the reader, she headed to the metal detectors. There, at least a half dozen school safety agents waited. School safety agents, who answer to the New York City Police Department, wear a police uniform and a shield. A pair of handcuffs dangles from their belts.

Under their gaze, Dickson would remove her jewelry, hairpins, and shoes. She would place her purse and her backpack on the conveyor belt and wait for an agent to nod her through. Another would run a security wand around her diminutive frame while she stood arms out, legs spread.