The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5) is the first major update of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) clinical guidebook in almost 20 years. The DSM-5 expands and alters the diagnosis criteria for several disorders, and in some cases, introduces definitions of “new” psychiatric disorders.

The influence the DSM-5 has on children’s services could be extensive, because its diagnostic criteria are the nation’s most commonly used for identifying and treating mental disorders. Changes in diagnostic criteria, and especially mental disorder definitions, may alter the eligibility for some children to receive specialized education in school or limit certain treatments pediatricians may provide for younger patients.

The two most controversial changes to the DSM-5 have to do with the diagnostic criteria for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Under the new guidelines, several individual disorders, such as Asperger’s syndrome, have been consolidated into a single autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Due to the new categorization, children with ASDs that are rooted mostly in communication difficulties or repetitive behavior may be reclassified as communication disorders, while some experts believe the single spectrum categorizations will leave systems unsure of whether a child meets “significant” clinical levels.

Dr. Michael J. Morrier, assistant director at the Emory Autism Center, said that since states have fluctuating definitions of autism eligibility, the new DSM-5 standards could result in some young people potentially losing their access to services.

“Some states right now, in order to qualify for that eligibility, you have to have a diagnosis of autistic disorder,” he said. “So since they’re getting rid of that, how are they going to do that?”

“One of the biggest changes is going to be having people really understand that autism spectrum disorders [fall within a] range, and it’s not these different subtypes anymore,” Morrier continued. “Someone with high IQ and a lack of social skills is going to have the same diagnosis as kids that have intellectual disabilities and those same social skills problems.”

Also under the new DSM-5 criteria, children can be given ADHD diagnoses if they demonstrate certain traits before turning 12. In the previous version of the DSM, the cut off for ADHD diagnoses was 7 years old.

“Changing the age, I think it’s just going to delay when kids get identified and served,” Morrier said.

The most publicized criticism of the DSM-5 changes came from Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, who in April said that the psychiatric “bible” shared more commonalities with a dictionary.

“The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been ‘reliability,’” he wrote in a blog post last month. “Each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity.”

File photo Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT

Originally published at The Center for Public Integrity

Amid a deepening debate over appropriate school discipline, board members of the nation’s second largest school district — Los Angeles Unified — took bold steps this week sure to be noticed nationally.

They voted to prohibit out-of-school suspensions of students based on “willful defiance,” a vague label, critics say, that’s become far too handy a vehicle for ejecting students rather than helping them settle down and improve academic performance. The board members also voted to implement a sweeping review and new standards for the district’s sizable police force, which has a history of aggressive ticketing of students.

The landmark provisions are contained in a “School Climate Bill of Rights”the school board adopted in a 5-2 vote on Tuesday.

Los Angeles Unified is the nation’s second largest school district, and with 300-plus police officers, it has the country’s largest school police force. It is the first school district in California to bar “willful defiance” suspensions. These suspensions — and school police citations for more serious criminal allegations — have fallen heavily on black and Latino students in neighborhoods struggling with high dropout rates.

A “willful defiance” suspension can stem from a student violating dress codes to lashing out with crude behavior or language, or refusing to be quiet or perform assigned work.

Separately, hundreds of L.A. Unified students, many of them middle-school students, have also been given school-police citations each month for engaging in physical fights or other “disturbing the peace” charges or for committing other infractions. In some cases, teachers or school administrators have requested that students receive tickets; in other cases, police officers have made the decision.

The new L.A. Unified policy aimed at curbing ticketing and arrests by school police stems from brewing controversy that the Center for Public Integrity has reported on over the last year.

The board’s new mandate strengthens existing requirements that L.A. Unified’s schools embrace other practices, including “positive behavior intervention” methods and “restorative justice” to improve student behavior and resolve disputes among students and teachers. The new order ensures that students can’t be sent home for defiance, but they can be removed from a class and kept at school.

Critics of student suspensions argue that children who act out in class are often are having trouble learning or are troubled by family crises. Kids only fall further behind and more detached from school when they languish at home for days or hit the streets unsupervised, they say.

Judith Perez, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, said her organization supports the new policy’s goals and supports keeping kids in school. But her members are worried about how they’re going carry out their orders without more adult supervisors inside L.A. Unified’s crowded, understaffed schools.

“The district needs to do more than enact a policy,” Perez said. “The first recommendation we are making is an increase in the number of assistant principals and counselors.”

A middle school, she said, can’t even get a second counselor unless it has more than 891 students. She also said that teachers’ contracts don’t allow them to supervise students pulled out of classrooms.

California, as a state, could follow Los Angeles’ lead in ending suspensions for defiance and setting limits on police involvement in discipline matters.

L.A. Unified’s policy mirrors a bill in California’s legislature that would sharply limit the ability of schools statewide to issue out-of-schools suspensions simply for defiance. During the 2011-2012 school year, state data shows, nearly half of more than 700,000 student suspensions in the state were for defiance.

Golden State legislators are considering another bill that would require all schools to set standards for the role of school police and strive to keep police out of routine disciplinary matters. Both bills have already passed through critical first committees.

“I’m a social worker by profession, and we at the Los Angeles Unified School District support the school police. But we cannot have a system that is just punitive and focuses on ‘the gotcha,’ “ L.A. Unified district board president Monica Garcia told the Center.

Garcia sponsored the “bill of rights” because she thought suspensions and aggressive use of school police in some schools was backfiring and failing to improve student behavior and achievement rates.

“What I expect to happen now is more graduation in Los Angeles,” Garcia said. She said L.A. Unified has an opportunity to show national leadership in efforts to stop a “school-to-prison pipeline.”

The board’s new policy declares that: “Studies indicate that suspension does not often result in positive behavior conditioning and furthermore can instead intensify misbehavior by increasing shame, alienation, and rejection amongst students.”

The text of the policy also says: “A study from Texas found that students are five times more likely to drop out, six times more likely to repeat a grade, and three times more likely to have contact with the juvenile-justice system if suspended.”

Garcia said that juvenile-court judges in Los Angeles also appealed to her in recent years to change practices that were leading to increasing numbers of court citations of students.

The judges said that too many students were being sent into the criminal justice system for minor offenses they felt should be handled at school, immediately, rather than with court appearances weeks or even months later.

Last year, the Center analyzed L.A. Unified’s school-police citations and produced reports in collaboration with KPCC radio in Southern California and KQED The California Report.

The analysis found that between 2009 and the end of 2011, L.A. Unified school police were issuing, at times, more than 1,000 court citations a month to students for a range of violations, including tardiness, graffiti, pot or cigarette possession and, especially, for allegations of “disturbing the peace.” The disturbing-the-peace charges stemmed from accusations of a student getting into fisticuffs, threatening to fight or using challenging language.

More than 40 percent of all tickets issued by police during this period were going to students younger than 15. And the numbers of citations issued in Los Angeles far exceeded the tickets that school police were handing out in New York City, a bigger district, the Center found.

A more recent analysis by the Center showed that tickets issued in L.A. Unified have fallen dramatically, the result of pressure from community activists, juvenile-court judges and news reports disclosing how the volume of tickets had ballooned.

But tickets that L.A. Unified school police still hand out to students for disturbing the peace, especially, remain highly concentrated in certain middle schools.

Students at Markham Middle School received more tickets during this time — 47 — than any other school in the district. Forty-one tickets were for fighting, or disturbing the peace. Students at the Watts Learning Center Charter Middle School got the next highest batch of tickets, with 13 out of 33 for fighting. Banning High School was third, with 32 tickets.

The Center’s latest analysis found that between last November and March of this year, about half of all the 1,590 tickets issued went to children 14 and younger.

More 13-year-olds — almost all of them black or Latino — received tickets than 16 or 17-year-olds. Black students, 10 percent of district enrollment, received more than 37 percent of disturbing-the-peace tickets. And 56 percent of black students cited for that infraction were between 11 and 14 years of age.

Manuel Criollo, a community organizer with the Labor-Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, has spent several years working with students, parents, district officials and school police to embrace alternatives to police citations. Starting last summer, school police began referring ticketed students to Los Angeles County Probation Department officials, who say they’re trying to keep kids out of court and instead send as many as they can first to community-based counseling services.

But Criollo’s group has been pushing for explicit, written district policies designed to roll back ticketing even more and set strict limits on police involvement in disciplinary matters and minor offenses.

The group has long complained about “racial patterns” and unfair ticketing practices, and asserted that some police officers’ attitudes have spoiled students’ relations with law enforcement and teachers. The Labor-Community Strategy Center drew attention to and helped end early-morning sweeps that officers were doing around schools in low-income neighborhoods in recent years; officers would nab students, search them and issue tickets with hefty dollar fines to kids` who were even minutes late.

Criollo said the board’s new policy is a “strong mandate” for district officials to sit down and hammer out new police policies they promised they would do last year. “It’s the culmination of a lot of what community groups have been fighting for,” Criollo said of the policy.

The “bill of rights” adopted this week orders the district to “review and evaluate” all current school policies, practices and training “relating to the equitable treatment of students.”

It also orders the district to “review the data on the use of school-based citations and arrests and identify and remedy frequent use at individual school sites.”

L.A. Unified School Police Department Chief Steve Zipperman did not oppose the policy, and Garcia consulted with him when it was drafted. L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy publicly supported the new policy, and said it was aimed at stopping “early criminalization” of students for “frivolous” matters.

There is a purity in theory, a beauty reminiscent of the idealism of Plato and Pythagoras, that is fun to engage. Working in this realm is a kind of game, fun, yet ultimately empty without the willingness to get out in the world and get dirty. In a training environment we seek to balance this tension in a way that honors both aspects of reality. We want to transmit the underlying principles while also showing how things “really” work.

The thinker and developer of restorative approaches who I most respect is Dominic Barter. His understanding of the underlying dynamics of conflict, the part that I see as based on theory or principle, is as keen as anyone I have met or studied. At the same time he has done the work of engaging his community in the co-creation of restorative systems throughout Rio de Janeiro and the rest of Brazil, as well as working around the world to help others do the same.

Dominic stresses the importance of systems in restorative work, and of consciously engaging the ways in which communities respond to conflict, which are often hidden. The first step in this process is to “engage identified sources of power within the community. Reach agreement within the community on the use of restorative practice as a way of handling conflict.” As a theory this seems pretty straightforward, but how do we make it real?

A lot of the work done here in Athens, Ga., was accomplished by my friend and former boss, Gwen O’Looney. Gwen was the mayor of Athens for eight years, and is energetically involved in all sorts of projects in the city. She knows everyone in town it seems, and she was able to connect with important people in the judiciary, the prosecutor’s office, the public defender’s office, the police, related nonprofits and many other stakeholder groups.

Most importantly, she is engaged with the community most impacted by our work, the folks whose kids come into frequent contact with law enforcement and the courts.These neighborhoods are impacted by high unemployment, poverty, crime, trouble with schools and a host of other “social ills” that are too common. Most of the residents are black.

Gwen was perhaps uniquely qualified to bridge these two groups. She could talk about policy, budgets, sociology, evidence based practices, and other issues of concern to those with the elected or appointed responsibility for community safety and public policy. She could also talk with leaders in the neighborhoods, people without official power, but who nonetheless were vital in making the work real. Without their participation and buy-in, without owning the process, the program will ultimately fail.

These two groups seem distinct, and when we look through certain lenses they are indeed far apart.Yet the reality is that they, and everyone else in this town, are interconnected in a myriad of ways. What happens to a poor kid charged with a crime has an impact on all of us, though it may not be immediately obvious.

The heart of social change lies in the communities most affected. A top-down approach to solving problems that create crime and other societal ills will never ultimately work. The top-down, power-over structure has served to create these conditions. Only when we as a society can admit this to ourselves can we begin to collaboratively engage in deciding what to do next.

It is time to stop doing things to people and for people, and begin to work with people. That is the only route to sustainable change.

National Inmate Survey, 2011–12 / U.S Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics

From the BJS New Report: Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011–12

The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released data from the 2011-2012 National Inmate Survey (NIS) on Thursday, revealing new findings about rates of sexual victimization in the nation’s prisons.

Some advocates claim that the new figures, however, may underreport the amount of juvenile inmate sexual victimizations that goes on in the nation’s jails and prisons.

“Previous studies and the experiences of young people in the adult criminal justice system document that youth are at greatest risk of sexual victimization in adult jails and prisons,” said Campaign for Youth Justice CEO and President Liz Ryan. “This study tells us that youth face sexual victimization in adult institutions, but due to underreporting by youth in challenging adult facility conditions, we need more research to know more about this problem.”

The findings include the first-ever nationalized estimates for the sexual victimization of juveniles incarcerated in adult facilities — with the BJS stating that roughly 1.8 percent of 16- and -17 year-olds held in U.S. adult facilities report being sexually assaulted by other inmates.

The data includes a sample size of nearly 100,000 adult inmates and approximately 7,000 juvenile inmates in state- and federally- operated prisons as well as locally-ran jails. Per the new BJS findings, the percentage of juveniles reporting sexual victimization by other inmates is marginally higher than the percentage of adult prisoners reporting such victimization in U.S. local jails (1.6 percent) and lower than the percentage of adults in U.S. state and federal prisons that report being sexually attacked (2 percent.)

“These data do not support the conclusion that juveniles held in adult prisons and jails are more likely to be sexually victimized in other age groups,” the report reads.

The national findings run contrary to previous BJS research, which suggested as much as 21 percent of all substantiated victims of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse in U.S. jails in 2005 were juveniles.

Brenda Smith, Director of The Project on Addressing Prison Rape at American University’s Washington College of Law, believes that the new numbers underestimate the rate of juvenile inmate sexual victimization in U.S. jails and prisons.

“During my tenure as a commissioner on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, we found that youth are at particular risk of abuse in custodial settings – both juvenile and adult facilities,” she said. “While I appreciate BJS taking a closer look at victimization of youth in adult facilities, these findings call for a closer look at the data, and conflict with existing research — their own and others — and from the previous accounts given by youth to the people that they trust.”

According to BJS findings, two-thirds of juvenile inmates that reported being sexually attacked by other inmates were victimized more than once, while three-quarters of juvenile inmates that reported experiencing staff sexual misconduct said they were victimized repeatedly.

Additionally, less than one-sixth of juveniles reporting inmate sexual abuse said they informed others of incidents, while less than a tenth of juveniles experiencing staff sexual misconduct said they informed family members, friends or facility personnel of such incidents.

DTKindler Photo / Flikr

Robert L. Listenbee, Jr., Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

“I don’t need to tell you that alcohol use by young people is dangerous,” said Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Administrator Robert Listenbee at a webinar held this week by the Interagency Coordination Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD.)

In a recorded message, Listenbee said alcohol is the most commonly used and abused drug in the United States, stating that it played prominently in the nation’s youth homicide, suicide and violent crime rates. He also said that underage drinking has deleterious effects on education, leads many chronic users to unemployment and underemployment and may result in individuals graduating to more potent — and perhaps illegal — substances.

“It takes a whole community to reinforce this agenda,” he said. To be effective in combating underage drinking, Listenbee said that officials from both law enforcement agencies and the justice system had to form partnerships with local community groups.

He also encouraged agencies like the OJJDP’S Underage Drinking Enforcement and Training Center (UDTEC) to promote “proven, science-based strategies” to reduce youth access to alcohol.

With many agencies experiencing budget cuts, Listenbee said that programs targeting underage drinking may have to find new and creative ways “to do more with less.”

“We can do this, but it’s going to take strategic thinking,” Listenbee said.

At the OJJDP-hosted event, “Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws: Accountability and the Role of Justice System,” Sherie Cantelon, Grant Management Specialist for OJJDP’s Youth Development, Prevention and Safety Division, served as moderator. Also speaking at the event were Shawn Walker, Director of Enforcement for the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC); Purdue Professor and retired judge Linda Chezen; and Diane Riibe, former executive director for Nebraska’s Project Extra Mile.

Courtesy of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control

Shawn Walker, Director of Enforcement.

“Law Enforcement really should be focused on contributing to an enhanced quality of life in the community,” Walker said. He believes it is important for law enforcement officials to reject the notion that underage drinking isn’t a major problem for communities, stating that deterring youth alcohol use also reduces secondary offenses, like vandalism and larceny, that typically stem from underage drinking.

Simply approaching underage drinking as a law enforcement issue, Walker said, is ineffective in remedying the problem. He said agencies, especially those with limited resources, could create “force multipliers” by building partnerships with other agencies, and also encouraged law enforcement officials to work with media, which in turn, could create advocacy for the issue.

He also suggested that law enforcement agencies talk to business leaders and school officials, and stressed partnering with specialized departments to formulate action plans. Gang units, school resource officers and community service boards are especially skillful at managing limited resources, Walker said.

During her presentation, Chezen stressed the importance of providing resources for judges, and especially judicial educators, who are tasked with organizing the continuing legal education (CLE) of state and local judges.

While judicial education standards vary from state to state, Chezen said that across the nation, most judges are required to obtain CLE hours to remain on the bench. Access to emerging science regarding underage drinking, she said, is crucial for judges to continue making adequate decisions in U.S. courtrooms.

Judicial Educators should know about screening tools and advocate for adequate resources for the education of judges and judicial staff, Chezen continued. She said that National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) was an excellent starting place for those seeking peer-reviewed, evidence-based information on underage drinking.

As a judge, she said she considered her opportunities to learn about new sciences to be precious and well-spent.

“Justice for kids,” she concluded, “depends on the adults.”

Courtesy of CDC.gov

Diane Riibe, former Executive Director for Nebraska's Project Extra Mile.

Ribbe advocated for the establishment of .08 blood alcohol concentration measurements as federal intoxicated driving standards, and was present when Bill Clinton signed the Federal Transportation Appropriations bill into law in October 2000.

During the webinar, she encouraged a multi-issue focus on legislative initiatives, education, youth leadership and media advocacy to amplify peer support influence on policies.

In order to mirror the successes of the tobacco control movement, she said advocates needed to have a sharp focus on science-based strategies, emphasizing the most effective, evidence-driven approaches. For advocates and activists, she cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s The Community Guide as a recommended resource — calling it “a very easy framework to identify strategies.”

She said that media advocacy could be used as a “strategic” means of building policy initiative support, which she believes could lead to long term, sustained changes regarding national alcohol policies.

“Media efforts are quite literally the ramping up of community [advocacy],” Ribbe said.

Since many individuals are concerned about underage drinking, she believes there is already fertile ground for civic engagement in most U.S. communities.

“Our job as advocates is to take this collective community care and harness it,” she said.

Local politics, though, in this collection of small, working-class communities, about 50 miles north of New York City, is anything but routine, or civil. It is a vicious scrum that has come to reflect deep religious and racial divides.

Next Tuesday’s election for seats to the East Ramapo Central School District’s board isn’t about politics in the traditional sense, pitting Democrats against Republicans or red state ideology against blue; it’s about the divisions between the black and Latino residents who see the public school system as a civic stepladder to a better life, and the Hasidim, a mystical religious sect, that sees it as a threat to its way of life.

The central issue of this otherwise minor election is a rephrasing of the question that animates politics here: where is the line that separates the public from the private.

Robert Stolarik / JJIE

April 7, 2013, Spring Valley, NY, USA: In a village divided by race, religion, and culture, a demographic split has allowed public money to pour into private religious schools, resulting in huge cuts to the already decimated public school system. Community leaders fear a rash of violence and a wave of youth related crime as the public school budget has been gutted in the Spring Valley District. A shopping center in Spring valley sits in the crossroads of an invisible racial, and religious boundary.

In recent years, the school board here has been dominated by members of the Hasidic community. Since taking control, the board has gutted the public school system, leaving the mostly black and Latino students with fewer classes, no after school programs and no extra curricular activities or clubs.

The most recent budget has called for even deeper cuts in an already devastated system. The public school community has said the Hasidic board exploits laws to redirect public money into yeshivas, where their children go for religious and cultural reasons.

Leaders of the Hasidic community say that the allegations that the religious dominated board redirects the money from public school children to the yeshivas is false.

“The biggest misconception that we have here is that we’re sticking our hands into the pockets of the public school kids and putting it in our childrens’ pockets,” Yehuda Weissmandl, a Hasidic Jew who assumed leadership of the school board when his predecessor abruptly resigned last month, recently said. “That is not true and it is offensive. I give away a lot of time to these children, time I should be spending with my children because I’m very passionate about these children.”

The election also comes as many in the area fear that the deep cuts are leading to a public safety crisis, one where teens will end up in the criminal justice system instead of school.

Robert Stolarik / JJIE

Spring Valley, NY, USA.

Dr. Oscar Cohen, an advocate for public school children who has worked with the Spring Valley NAACP, said the same vitriol that has marked the feud between the public school advocates and the members of the Hasidic community has defined the campaign for the seats on the board.

“Anger,” he said. “That is the prevailing force here. It is effecting everything.”

This election is unusual because it is the first time in years that none of the candidates for the three contested seats are from the Ultra Orthodox community, but they are backed by it.

Arthur Schwartz, one of the lead attorneys on a class action lawsuit challenging the practices of the Orthodox-dominated school board, described what he called the ‘Charles slate’ as “cosmetic.” This slate includes: Bernard Charles, a black interim member of the board; Pierre Germain, a Haitian American, and MaraLuz Corado, a Latina pastor.

“I don’t know if this is going to fool a lot of black or Hispanic people,” he said. “There are people who are willing to sell out their brethren, so to speak, in return for power and positions.”

Robert Stolarik

April 9, 2013, Spring Valley, NY, USA: Students, parents, and activists protest at the school board meeting discussing the budget for the 2013-2014 school year.

Schwartz said that although there are more registered public school voters, the Hasidim have a bigger turnout because they are effective at mobilizing turnout.

Charles did not return phone calls for comment on this story. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press office did not respond to calls and emails.

Cohen agreed with Schwartz’s assessment, saying that the lack of a slate of Hasidic candidates is in appearance only.

The public school slate of candidates for the East Ramapo School Board — Robert Forrest, Margaret Tuck and Eustache Clerveaux — accepted the invitation from the local NAACP leadership to field questions at the meeting. But Charles’ opposing slate declined without an explanation.

Robert Stolarik / JJIE

April 9, 2013, Spring Valley, NY, USA: Students, parents, and activists protest at the school board meeting discussing the budget for the 2013-2014 school year.

The night of the forum, while they talked to an audience of some 125 black and Latino parents about how they would look out for the interests of the public school children, Charles was spotted at a local ballpark where members of the Hasidic community were hosting an event on the dangers of the Internet.

He was handing out campaign fliers in Yiddish.

Read the first article here: Public Kid vs. Private Kid Divide in One New York Community Turns Dangerous  

UPDATE: At 3:30PM on Wednesday, May 15, FBI agents descended on Ramapo Town Hall forcing employees from the building and seizing documents from a number of departments. 

By a 40-10 vote, the Illinois Senate passed House Bill 2404, which would place young people in the state charged with felonies under the jurisdiction of juvenile courts as opposed to the adult system.

Currently, 17-year-olds in Illinois charged with felonies are automatically tried as adults. If the bill is signed into law, such youth would instead be tried, initially, in juvenile courts, where judges have greater ability to avoid handing out sentences that entail incarceration.

Under the legislation, however, 17-year-olds with serious offenses are still eligible for transfer to adult courts. Additionally, the bill does not apply retroactively, and judges would still have the discretion to transfer felony offenders as young as 13 to the state’s adult courtrooms.

The same day, senators approved HB 2401 by a 39-9 vote. The bill would authorize Cook County to establish a Redeploy Illinois program in certain parts of the county, such as in specified police districts.

Currently, state laws mandate that the Redeploy program — an intervention which helps provide, among other services, mental health counseling and tutoring to non-violent juvenile offenders — has to be implemented on a county-wide basis.

Counties that participate in the Redeploy program, in exchange for state aid, must agree to reduce their state youth prison commitments by at least 25 percent. If Gov. Pat Quinn signs HB 2401 into law, it would allow communities to adjust Redeploy programming to focus on smaller regions — a method considered more effective by many reform advocates.

According to the Juvenile Justice Initiative, not only does the Redeploy program result in greater reductions in youth incarceration and recidivism rates, it also yields a high return on investment for Illinois.

“The annual appropriation for Redeploy Illinois is $2.4 million,” the organization states in a HB 2401 fact sheet. “The potential cost avoidance of averting 883 commitments to the Department of Juvenile Justice is $40 million, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.”

Lee Hulteng / MCT

Illustration of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 students and himself in April 2007.

College senior Seung-Hui Cho awakened early on the morning of April 16, 2007. According to his suitemates, he had been up since at least 5 a.m., typing away at his computer.

About 30 minutes later, Cho, still in his boxers, went inside a Harper Hall bathroom on the campus of Virginia Tech. He brushed his teeth, and scrubbed his face with acne wash. The night before, he had made his weekly phone call to his family, who were living in nearby Fairfax County. Another uneventful, if not boring, conversation, his family later recalled.

Cho returned to his bedroom, got dressed, and left the suite. At about 6:45 that morning, a student hanging out in the foyer of the West Ambler Johnston resident hall saw Cho wedged between the interior of the building and a mailbox foyer. About 15 minutes later, Emily Hilshcer entered the dorm after being dropped off by her boyfriend.

Gunshots rang out in Hilshcer’s bedroom at 7:15. Moments later, Cho walked out of the resident hall. He left behind several spent shell casings, a smattering of bloody footprints and his first two victims, Hilshcer and Ryan Christopher Clark, a residential assistant who lived next door.

Just two minutes after the murders, Cho walked back over to his residence hall, swiped his student ID and returned to his suite, where he changed out of his bloody clothing. While first responders were uncovering the bodies at West Ambler Johnston, Cho logged onto his student e-mail one more time. He erased all of his files and deleted the account.

For the next hour, police canvassed West Ambler Johnston, desperately seeking witnesses, while policy officials at Virginia Tech met to determine the best way to inform the community about the shootings.

About a half-hour later, Cho entered Norris Hall, a building that primarily housed engineering classes. From the inside, he chained shut three of the building’s public entrances. At 9:26 a.m., Virginia Tech officials sent out mass e-mails to staff, faculty and students, informing them of the double-homicide that had occurred earlier that morning. Twenty minutes later, Cho entered room 206 where an Advanced Hydrology class was underway, and opened fire.

Eleven minutes and a 174 rounds of ammunition later 31 people, including Cho, were dead, with an additional 17 sustaining serious injuries.

The next day, Cho is declared the man responsible for the deadliest, single-shooter massacre in United States history.

On CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, anchormen and pundits debated the merits of gun control and psychiatric medication, trying desperately to deduce why the 23 year-old college student embarked upon such an orgy of death and destruction.

Commonalities Among Young Killers

“They are virtually all white, they are virtually all using assault weapons and rifles — not handguns — [and] they all say or claim to be the victims of relentless bullying and gay-bashing,” he said.

Regarding Cho, Kimmel said that while his race made him an outlier among school shooters, he shared almost all of the common traits that other young mass killers foster.

Without first addressing how these individuals perceive their own identities, Kimmel said finding ways to prevent school massacres are impossible.

“You cannot explain it without talking about masculinity,” Kimmel said. “You cannot explain it without talking about the fact that of all [recent] school shootings, all 30 of them or so, 29 have been committed by boys.”

“The questions we want to ask at the end of this,“ he said, “is what are the characteristics of these boys, and what are the characteristics of the schools where they explode?”

Dr. Michael Welner, chairman of The Forensic Panel, examined an attempted mass killer for the first time in 1996. Since then, he’s evaluated six more individuals that either embarked upon mass killings or attempted massacres. Not only has he interviewed, in-depth, people like Cho, he said he has reviewed their lives in “minute detail” as part of criminal proceedings against them.

Like Kimmel, he sees a link between young killers and what he deems “violent constructs of manhood.”

“The psychological factors of mass killing universally involve someone who equates destructiveness for destructiveness’ sake with an expression of masculinity,” he said. “It is an impersonal crime that is all about the killer’s expression, directed at people to whom he is largely detached.”

As a forensic psychiatrist, Welner has spent the last two decades examining mass murderers and seeking ways to prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech massacre from transpiring.

“I have lived this topic in many ways and for many years,” he said. “And I absolutely believe it can be eliminated.”

Going Out in a Blaze of Glory

Stephen Dunn / Hartford Courant/MCT

Police tape surrounds the area near the home of Nancy Lanza, the mother of Adam Lanza, who fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

What separates mass killers from spree killers, Welner said, is the shooter’s primary intent. Spree killers — like Christopher Dorner, the former LAPD officer suspected in four murders earlier this year in California and Andrew Cunanan, who killed five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace, in a multi-state spree in 1997 — are individuals that, in the aftermath of an initial crime, begin killing others during flight from capture. Mass killers — like Adam Lanza, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and countless others over the years — instead select a particular site with the intent of targeting a large number of victims.

Killings of the like, he said, are most likely perpetrated because the killers aim for “transcendent notoriety.” The greater numbers killed, the greater the media coverage, Welner said. Shooters like Cho, he believes, are certainly aware of the fact.

“With the advent of 24-hour news, pressured competition among new networks and the ability to engage breaking news from many directions, a number of more recent mass killings have drawn unprecedented coverage,” Welner said. “Thus it is not merely the news coverage afforded catastrophe, but how humanizing coverage erodes the borders between right and wrong.”

Kimmel said that school shootings have “evolved” through three stages over the last 30 years. Up until the early 1990s, he said that most on-campus homicides were perpetrated by young men of color, generally with handguns, against specific targets, in “individual acts of vengeance.” With the proliferation of metal detectors and armed personnel in urban schools, he said that school shootings of the like have all but disappeared. “It’s not that the violence has actually decreased,” he said. “Now, they wait off school grounds and shoot them.”

He calls the 1992-1999 timeframe “the classic phase of random rampage school shootings.” During this period, most school shootings were enacted by young white males, generally living in suburban communities, who seemed to kill random students and teachers using assault rifles. He cites shootings in Jonesboro, Ark., and Paducah, Ky., as the archetypical “classic” school shooting of the time period. The perpetrators, he said, were miserable young men that felt extremely aggrieved, and almost all of them were arrested after their violent outbursts. “Some sat down and waited to be arrested by the police,” Kimmel said. “They are all in jail now.”

After the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, however, Kimmel said that most school shootings since have been instances of “suicide-by-mass murder,” with triggermen intending to die — usually, at their own hands — at the end of their shootings.

Michael Mulvey / Dallas Morning News/MCT

A Columbine High School student looks over his shoulder at the home of Eric Harris, one of two student gunmen involved in the massacre at Columbine High School. Littleton, Colorado.

“These guys want to kill themselves,” he said. “That’s their primary motive, but what they also want to do is take as many of their tormentors with them when they go.”

As with Welner, he believes that some young mass killers may embark upon such rampages due to a thirst for notoriety.

“One of the characteristics that all of the recent school shooters do have is a desire for fame and glory, that when they go, they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory,” he said. “And everybody will remember them forever.”

Vengeful, Righteous Violence

“Children are not born to hate,” Welner said. “Culture matters.”

In analyzing American culture, both Welner and Kimmel detect a certain sense of “destructiveness” in modern constructions of masculine identity.

“What virtually every man knows is that violence ought to be a last resort,” Kimmel said. “But it is always an available way to resolve differences — I draw a line in the sand, and dare you to cross it.”

“Somebody’s bullying you, and your daddy says, ‘eventually, you’re just going to have to stand up to them,’” he said. “That’s what we learn, and that’s what these guys did.”

Welner believes that mass killings are often “endpoints” of pathways that begin much earlier in the lives of young shooters. “In its earliest stages, the mass killer blames others for shortcomings and socially has difficulty fitting in,” he said. “As he grows into adolescence, he has great sexual insecurity and identifies with the expression of masculinity through destructiveness, particularly with weapons.”

Young people embarking on murderous rampages, he said, generally grow more alienated as get older. Many times, he said, they develop a general resentment for everyone around them; they may begin identifying with mass killers, with the young men eventually developing elaborate homicide fantasies. He said that frequently, these individuals become invested in certain grievances, which they may feel a need to “protect” by hiding themselves away from others.

“At the point when the killer believes his once-higher hopes for himself will never happen, he chooses to embark on a mass killing, to pass from anonymity and marginality to a story that is relevant to all,” Welner said.

A certain sense of “masculine destruction” is imbedded in American culture, Kimmel said. Though he doesn’t believe it’s the sole factor in mass shootings, he similarly believes that it is impossible to analyze incidents without addressing the subject.

“Some of them learn it from their father, some of them learn it from other boys, some of them learn it from media images,” he said, “but basically, this idea that vengeful, righteous violence is legitimate is ingrained in virtually all boys.”

There’s No One There To See It

However, when exploring school shootings, he believes that the environments themselves are frequently overlooked as possible “motivations” for mass killings.

“In addition to profiling the shooters themselves, I think we also need to profile the schools that they come from,“ he said. “They’re not just randomly distributed in our country.”

University of Colorado Denver / Zuma Press/MCT

James Holmes, the suspected perpetrator of the mass shooting in July 2012 at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, which killed 12 people and injured 58 others.

Some schools, he said, are simply more likely than others to be the sites of mass killings. Most recent school shootings, he said, have occurred at places where the student body is “overwhelmingly white” — sometimes constituting as high as 98 or 99 percent of the complete population. They also tend to be “jockocracies,” he adds — environments where student athletes “rule with absolute impunity,” whose bullying of other students is often overlooked by administrators and teachers.

“If you are targeted or bullied and gay-bashed in those kinds of schools, you have nowhere to turn, because there’s only one culture, and you’re either in it or out of it,” he said.

He believes that was the case with Cho. Campuses of the like — where students have such a deep identification with the school as a “brand — generally represent a “monoculture” where students are either insiders or outsiders. He says that the atmosphere at Columbine High School was similar.

Kimmel believes that youth who feel alienated and victimized could benefit greatly from counseling services. But in the wake of No Child Left Behind, which he refers to as “the worst educational policy ever enacted,” many schools have cut back on non-curricular costs.

“These kids who explode, they don’t ever get seen by a guidance counselor,” he said. “They don’t ever get seen by therapists in high school, they just fly under the radar.”

When mass killings on school grounds occur, Kimmel said that a frequent reaction from bystanders is “oh my, no one ever saw it coming.”

“Well, that’s right,” he responds. “There’s no one there to see it.”

Counseling interventions, he believes, could serve as a vital deterrent to prevent future school massacres.

“We have got to make a choice and a commitment at the national level, state level and local level to put more counselors in schools,” he said. “Not more armed guards, not metal detectors, but people who actually talk to these kids.”

Finding Solutions

According to Kimmel, a pivotal first step would entail shifting cultural priorities away from perpetrators of violence and focusing, instead, on those that are victimized.

“To change the culture doesn’t just mean changing the culture of school shooters,” he said. “It also means we have to stop supporting the bullies, that we have to stop being silent when they do it, we have to stop being bystanders when they do it.”

Kimmel believes that addressing the issue of school violence requires a frank conversation about homophobia. Taunting and harassing students based on sexual identification, he believes, is the most common — and effective — way to torment a young male, whether or not the individual is gay or straight.

Collectively, unless U.S. culture is able to “withdraw permission” for young people to victimize and bully their peers, he believes there is little chance to reduce the likelihood of young people committing acts of mass homicide.

A possible deterrent to school shootings, he said, may be the inclusion of Gay-Straight-Alliances on high school campuses.

“Gay-Straight-Alliances are actually a very effective way to reduce the possibility of violence in schools,” he argues. “As a result, you take away a lot of the power that bullies have over the victim, with all of the taunting and gay-baiting and gay-bashing.”

While Kimmel suggests a proactive measure to combat potential mass homicides, Welner opts for a more direct solution — the establishment of what he considers the mental health specialist equivalents of Navy SEALs.

“If we can have trained hostage negotiators, who combine interpersonal skills with specialized training, we absolutely can develop those who would be deployed as aggressive outpatient treatment teams,” he said.

Welner said there is precedent for his theoretical “mental health SEALs” in law enforcement, the Secret Service and even outpatient mental health services. “The precedents are all around us,“ he said. “The answers for this and other solutions are right in front of us, and the talent is there as well.”

In January of this year, NCJFCJ was asked by representatives of Vice President Joe Biden to provide input to the committee he chaired that was tasked to make recommendations to President Barack Obama after the Newtown school shootings. Specifically, our organization was asked our views on increased school security in schools.

While we do not disagree that schools need to be safe for all of our children and school personnel, we wanted to remind the committee that the security issue needs to be approached with caution for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its potential impact of the so-called school to prison pipeline.

We wrote that many counties across the country experienced significant increases in minor school arrests when police began to be placed on campus in the 1990s.  School safety did not improve with increased police presence but graduation rates did fall.

In addition, there is research that shows that a first-time arrest doubles the odds that a student will drop out of high school, and a first time court appearance quadruples the odds. The American Psychological Association, the Council of State Governments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all found that this high level of discipline, including arrests, predict grade retention, school dropout rates and future involvement in the criminal and juvenile justice systems.

Ultimately, this negatively impacts young people when they apply to college, for a job or to join the military. Further, research suggests that the influx of police in schools has contributed to an overall environment that jeopardizes rather than enhances school safety. As a result of all this, there has been a growing national trend to reduce police involvement in schools.

In 2012, NCJFCJ passed a resolution entitled, “Juvenile Courts and Schools Partnering to Keep Kids in School and Out of Court,” which among other things noted, that zero tolerance policies have resulted in increased suspensions, expulsions, arrests and referrals to the juvenile justice system while the overall rate of school violence has remained stable or has declined. As an alternative to zero tolerance policies and additional police in schools, NCJFCJ supports the following:

-School administration discretion in handling school misbehavior;

-Testing and implementation of alternatives to zero tolerance policies such as systemic school-wide violence prevention programs, social skills curricula, family engagement and positive behavioral supports;

-Collaboration of the juvenile justice system, schools and community agencies to foster positive relationships with students to promote school attendance and academic success;

-Judicially led collaborations to reduce school exclusions with intensive training, technical assistance and public education.

In July 2012, with foundations’ support, NCJFCJ began a new project entitled “Judicially Led Responses to Eliminate School Pathways to the Juvenile Justice System.”  Its goal is to support and implement our earlier resolution.

There are good examples of judicially led collaborations in this arena. Most notably, Judge Steven Teske of Clayton County, Ga., brought together the court, law enforcement, schools and others to develop alternatives to law enforcement referrals which had sky-rocketed in his county.

The result was a 70 percent drop in school referrals to juvenile court between 2003 and 2010. Serious weapons incidents on campus dropped nearly 80 percent.  Most importantly, graduation rates increased by 20 percent while felony rates decreased by 51 percent. Other jurisdictions have followed this approach with success.

Here in Los Angeles, where I preside, we created a School Attendance Task Force to develop ways to encourage young people to attend school rather than punish them for not attending. Our efforts helped bring about changes in law enforcement practices, school policies and even caused the Los Angeles City Council to revise its daytime loitering ordinance to conform to a more positive approach implemented by our courts which were handling 10,000 to 20,000 citations for daytime loitering each year.

In doing so, we heard from schools, students, community activists and others.  There has been a decrease in the number of these citations and most importantly from my perspective, a feeling by many members of our community that their voices can and will be heard by public officials who work for them.

Our local task force also passed a resolution calling for development and implementation of many of the notions espoused by NCJFCJ and put into practice by Judge Teske and others. The point here is that, instead of over utilizing our courts and law enforcement agencies in typically punitive ways,  judges, working with law enforcement, schools, agencies, families and communities can help make our schools and communities safer, healthier and more productive by taking more positive approaches with our youth and their families.

It’s hard work, but it works.

Michael Nash is the Los Angeles County, California, Juvenile Court’s presiding judge and the president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

Megan Annitto

Although discussion of trafficked youth has become prevalent in mainstream media and other venues, protection from prosecution for prostitution of domestic minors still remains elusive.

Legislation to protect these young people continues to face an uphill battle in many states — only about a dozen have succeeded in passing legislation addressing their needs. And in many instances, even where legislation has passed, protection is limited or curtailed in significant ways.

This is despite the fact that the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) now, for the first time, specifically calls on states to abandon the practice of prosecuting minors for prostitution. And yet California’s state Assembly recently struck a portion of a pending bill that would have eliminated prosecution of minors who are exploited. Not so in North Carolina.

This week, the state senate voted on a bill which, if enacted into law, would put North Carolina among a handful to prohibit the prosecution of exploited minors for prostitution consistent with the TVPA’s current stance on the issue. While about a dozen other states have led the way to provide measures that recognize and protect these minors in some capacity, currently only a few ban the prosecution of all minors under the age of 18 from prosecution for prostitution outright as North Carolina’s proposed legislation will do.

North Carolina’s comprehensive Safe Harbor Bill addresses many aspects of trafficking, including increased penalties for those who traffic and seek to purchase sex with a minor.

Awareness of trafficking and the need to address demand to purchase sex with minors has become more sophisticated in the past year or two but progress on other pieces of the solution remains slower than many realize. In North Carolina, much of the credit for this comprehensive legislation belongs to the support of the law enforcement and prosecution community, something that is not always present in other places. In fact, opposition from law enforcement can sometimes present the fatal blow for legislation meant to reframe the status of the young people who are exploited. For example, in New York — the first state to pass a Safe Harbor measure protecting some youth from prosecution – some in law enforcement opposed the legislation for four years before it passed.

The North Carolina legislation is particularly significant because it protects all minors from prosecution even though it is one of two states where all juveniles over the age of 15 are prosecuted as adults.

The progress of North Carolina’s bill is promising evidence of a shift that is occurring across the country. It was, in fact, leadership by prosecutors that brought about such resounding support for this bill that passed without opposition.

Now the state House should approve the legislation and the governor should sign the bill swiftly and with great pride. Hopefully, other states currently considering Safe Harbor legislation will follow on the path started in New York five years ago and now continuing through North Carolina.

In doing so, states should retain the provisions of Safe Harbor legislation that are most meaningful, services for victims and protection from prosecution, because these provisions are critical in both practical and symbolic terms.

The author’s article discussing safe harbor legislation in detail is available at:

http://yalelawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Annitto_30.pdf

Megan Annitto is an Assistant Professor of Law at Charlotte School of Law where she teaches and researches in the areas of criminal procedure and juvenile justice. Her research interests include the development of the law relating to the role of age and youth in the criminal justice system, such as the effect of youth on legal questions of consent, waiver of rights, and juvenile justice reform. Her research discusses sex trafficking of domestic youth and their prosecution for prostitution, advocating for a more legally coherent and rational approach by courts and legislatures. Professor Annitto received her law degree and Master of Social Work from the Catholic University of America where she graduated magna cum laude. She received a B.A. from Boston College.