Courier Post- 4/8/07- Juvenile detention population declines

A disproportionate number of minority youths continues to be incarcerated in state facilities, but the overall population of a once-crowded juvenile detention center is shrinking, according to Juvenile Justice Commission officials.

That was the good news for Camden County's Juvenile Detention Center in Gloucester Township, which four years ago sometimes held as many as 131 children in a building designed for 37, but was "under capacity" in February.

Lisa Macaluso, director of local programs and services for the state's Juvenile Justice Commission, said the old numbers at the detention center were "very, very scary."

The severe cut in population followed an intensive application of detention alternatives, said Macaluso, who made her statements last week at The Rutgers University Center for Children and Childhood Series.

Chief among those alternatives was implementation of "station house adjustments," said Anthony Lingo, manager of special grants for the City of Camden. Those adjustments, mandated by the state attorney general, require police to notify parents or guardians to take custody of young offenders who otherwise would be detained to await court hearings.

The process is in line with a policy that juveniles should be detained only when they are a danger to society or represent a high risk that they won't appear at scheduled court events.

"In the past, we've used detention as a portal to treatment, to deal with kids we don't know how to deal with or to punish them for violating probation," said Macaluso, who says the commission is expected to release a report dealing with juvenile justice issues later this month. "It was an over-reliance on a place (county detention facilities) that couldn't say no."

Camden was one of five counties that participated in a program designed to cut population at youth detention centers.

But the drop in the number of detainees at the youth center, in the Blackwood section of Gloucester Township, was unrelated to statistics that show a disproportionate number of minorities, primarily African Americans and Hispanics, are imprisoned.

Jane Siegel, associate professor of criminology at Rutgers University, who moderated the panel discussion, said 61 percent of juvenile offenders in residential treatment facilities are minorities. Only 16 percent of the state's under 18 population is African American, she said, "and no state appears immune."

"You can call it 1,000 different things, but in any state there are kids of color in disproportionate numbers in the justice system," said Michael Finley, an associate of the W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness and Equity, based in San Francisco.

Statistics on the Web site of that institute show that in 2002, the latest year for which numbers are available, 66 percent of New Jersey's residents between 10 and 17 years old were white, 18 percent were black, and 16 percent Hispanic.

Among youths in juvenile facilities that same year, 64 percent were African American, 19 percent Hispanic, and 17 percent white, the Burns Institute reported.

Robert Listenbee, the chief of the juvenile unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the agency that provides legal representation to those unable to pay for private attorneys, said numbers could be higher than reported because of the difficulty in identifying Hispanics.

"You can't do it by name, or skin color. We have to find ways to count minorities who have contact with the justice system," Listenbee said.

Lingo said Camden County residents also show up in the state prison system in a disproportionate number, especially among female inmates. He said 10 percent of women in prison are from Camden County, and 90 percent of those are from Camden City.

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