Ellen: We Need to Change the Message

Ellen DeGeneres opened her show this morning with a few minutes of emotional commentary on the murder of Lawrence King.

“A boy has been killed and a number of lives have been ruined,” she said. “And somewhere along the line the killer, Brandon, got the message that it’s so threatening and so awful and so horrific that Larry would want to be his valentine that killing Larry seemed to be the right thing to do. And when the message out there is so horrible, that to be gay, you can get killed for it, we need to change the message [applause]. Larry was not a second-class citizen. I am not a second-class citizen. It is OK if you’re gay…. I would like you to start paying attention to how often being gay is a punch line of a monologue or how often gay jokes are in a movie. That kind of message–laughing at someone because they’re gay is just the beginning. It starts with laughing at someone, and then it’s verbal abuse, and then it’s physical abuse, and then it’s this kid Brandon killing a kid like Larry. We must change our country, and we can do it. We can do it with our behavior, we can do it with the messages we send our children, we can do it with our vote.”

Watch the video.

Highest Rate of Incarceration in US History

A new report published by the Pew Center on the States reveals that the jail and prison population in the United States is 2.3 million people. That’s more than one in every one hundred adults, the highest rate at any time in US history. Last year alone the population grew by 25,000. Shocking.

New York Times news summary here. Full text of the report here.

Torture in Ohio

When Sheila Clark came home from work last Friday in Hanover Township, a rural town near Cincinnati, she found her disabled 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, bound, gagged, bruised and bleeding. Her hair had been cut off. Her assailants had doused her with water and forced her to walk barefoot through the snow in the yard. They had clubbed her repeatedly with a baseball bat. And when they were through torturing her after perhaps six hours, Cheyenne Blanton, 17, and Joseph Nagle, 16, fled, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow for the police to track. They were arrested that same afternoon and charged as juveniles with felony counts of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, assault and vandalism. According to the New York Times, “prosecutors said they expected the court to approve a request to try them as adults, given their ages, records and the seriousness of the charges.” They could face seventy-five years to life in prison.

Blanton and Nagle, parents of a baby boy, have had run-ins with the law in the past. Both have been convicted on domestic-violence charges and probation violations, and Nagle was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon. Both have spent time in detention. Nagle had a court appearance scheduled on Friday to answer to charges of “unruly behavior” brought by his parents.

According to Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, the assailants hid overnight in the Clarks’ basement; they had planned to steal Sheila’s car, aiming to skip town before Nagle’s court appearance. When they learned that Sheila had taken the car to work on Friday morning, the AP reports, the two “went into the kitchen to get something to eat before going upstairs and waking her daughter.”

Why they stuck around and proceeded to attack Ashley so viciously is beyond me. That’s a question for the mental health experts, who I hope will shed some light on this awful crime. I’d be interested to know what case officers had to say about the mental health of these two while they were in detention. What was their treatment regimen, if any? And when it came time to determine eligibility for parole, who decided they were safe for release? (I assume after-care was barely an afterthought.)

Blanton and Nagle are being held in juvenile detention and are set to appear in court later this week with court-appointed attorneys. “I want full justice for my daughter,” said Sheila Clark, who, along with Jones, is pushing for adult charges. “Those two never need to walk the streets again.”

New York Numbers Game

Matthew Schwarzfeld, a reporter at the New York-based urban policy magazine City Limits, looks at the costs associated with implementing the ambitious state plan, put forward by Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) commissioner Gladys Carrión, to shut down six youth prisons next year. (Background here and here.)

“Now that Carrión has put her agency on the path toward a community-based treatment model for lesser juvenile offenders, groups affected by the change are wondering if and how the state will help pay for it,” he writes. “Only $863,000 of the $14 million saved by closing the facilities will be reinvested directly into community programs. (The remainder will be used to hire staff for facility-based and aftercare programming.)”

So where, it’s fair to ask, is the money for these proposed community programs going to come from? State reimbursements? That’s what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants. And that’s what the New York Juvenile Justice Coalition calls for, too. The Redirect New York bill, which the Coalition helped draft, “would require the state to reimburse counties at 65 percent for [alternative] programs rather than the current 50 percent.” OCFS has also proposed doing away with reimbursements for detention, creating a further disincentive for counties to continue sending young offenders down the school-to-prison pipeline.

Everything about this plan is bold, and promising. Turning off the spigot on that pipeline is, of course, the right aim. Incentivizing communities to develop detention alternatives–also, a smart move. Making sure that those alternatives are in place, ready to open their doors on day one and then adequately funded so that they stay open in the long term–you can’t ask for more than that. Then again, you can’t ask for anything less.

The Murder of Lawrence King

On February 12, Brandon McInerney, a 14-year-old at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, walked into his computer lab and shot 15-year-old Lawrence King (pictured above) in the head in front of two dozen classmates. Lawrence was declared brain dead a day later and taken off life support on February 14. Brandon fled the scene and was quickly apprehended by local police; he is being held at a juvenile detention facility in nearby Ventura on $770,000 bail. Prosecutors are charging him as an adult with gun possession and murder as a premeditated hate crime–if convicted, he faces fifty-two years to life in prison.

This was not a gang-related killing nor a school shooting spree. It was an execution. Brandon singled Lawrence out and shot him at point-blank range, allegedly because Lawrence was gay–and, friends say, recently admitted to having a crush on Brandon.

Lawrence, indeed, had come out to his classmates during this school year. In recent weeks, he had begun to dress like a girl, wearing lipstick and jewelry, nail polish and high-heeled boots. His sexual display, classmates explained in interviews with the press, had prompted taunts from some of the boys at school, including Brandon. Lawrence wasn’t shy, though; he stood up for himself in confrontations. According to the Los Angeles Times, Brandon and Lawrence had gotten into a shouting match at lunch the day before he was killed. A student who witnessed the encounter said one of the bullies shouted to Lawrence, “You better watch your back.”

By all accounts, Lawrence was a sweet, confident kid who was just starting to embrace his identity. News reports have zeroed in on some colorful details, revealing the vibrant personality behind an otherwise faceless victim. This was a kid who helped his mother crochet scarves for US troops for the holidays. A budding entomologist, he collected insects and could identify various species of household bugs, and he had planted a passion fruit vine in his backyard so that it would attract butterflies. The metaphors at hand are rich and poignant, and so sad: as soon as he crawled out of his cocoon, he was squashed.

Lawrence didn’t have it easy at school. He wasn’t spared from the bullying that often accompanies those who come out at such a young age. And he didn’t have it easy at home, either. His parents, Greg and Dawn King, have been reticent in the wake of their son’s death, perhaps because they don’t care to explain why they had kicked him out of the house. Lawrence spent his final days at Casa Pacifica, a shelter for abused children, where, according to Tom Gregory at Huffington Post, he found solace and acceptance in a black Newfoundland named Archie.

The shooting, understandably, has shocked the residents of Oxnard, a relatively peaceful, middle-class suburb near Malibu. On Saturday, February 16, nearly 1,000 supporters–classmates from a wide spectrum of social circles, parents, activists and stunned neighbors–came together to pay tribute in a march through town. “The size of the turnout surprised police, school officials and even the two Hueneme High School sophomores who put the event together,” the LA Times reported.

“We were expecting maybe 100 or 200 people,” said Courtney LaForest, 16, as she gazed at a broad “peace circle” formed by march participants at Plaza Park in downtown Oxnard. “This is incredible.”

Courtney said the turnout reflected a community’s anguish over a senseless shooting that has destroyed the lives of two young men. It was also a public plea for tolerance on school campuses for those who are different, she said.

Vigils have been taking place ever since, along with tolerance teach-ins and support sessions for parents of fearful, traumatized children. Meanwhile, the story has galvanized LGBT activists nationwide and has even reached the ears of the top Democratic contenders for President. When Hillary Clinton heard about the incident, her campaign issued this statement:

I was deeply saddened by the recent death of 15-year-old Lawrence King who was killed at his school in Oxnard, CA. No one should face intimidation or violence, particularly at school, because of their sexual orientation or the way they express their gender identity.

We must finally enact a federal hate crimes law to ensure that gay, lesbian and transgender Americans are protected against violent, bias-motivated crimes. We must send a unified message that hate-based crime will not be tolerated.

Barack Obama quickly followed suit:

It was heartbreaking to learn about Lawrence King’s death, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. King’s senseless death is a tragic example of the corrosive effect that bigotry and fear can have in our society. It’s also an urgent reminder that we need to do more in our schools to foster tolerance and an acceptance of diversity; that we must enact a federal hate crimes law that protects all LGBT Americans; and that we must recommit ourselves to becoming active and engaged parents, citizens and neighbors, so that bias and bigotry cannot take hold in the first place. We all have a responsibility to help this nation live up to its founding promise of equality for all.

Notice how both Clinton and Obama included a call in their statements for a federal hate crimes bill. It’s here that I get tripped up a bit. As I think about this troubling case, a thorny legal question keeps pricking at me: Is this, by legal standards, a hate crime? To ask the question is not to let Brandon off the hook. He faces a serious charge for a serious crime. He has a lot to answer for, and he’ll have his day in court (he will enter his plea on March 21). To ask the question, though, is to ask whether a 14-year-old is capable of committing a hate crime. It’s a crucial question to ask, as the case moves forward and as legislators consider a federal hate crime bill.

For what it’s worth, I strongly suspect that Brandon’s lethal aggression toward Lawrence has more to do with immaturity and access to guns than calculated, categorical hatred for homosexuals. I hope that the court takes his age into consideration when meting out his punishment.

Grits for Breakfast: TYC Can Learn From NYC

Scott Henson at the Texas-based blog Grits for Breakfast read Wednesday’s New York Times story on the Juvenile Justice Initiative and thinks officials at the Texas Youth Commission should, too. When it comes to developing cheaper alternatives to youth prisons, he suggests, the TYC can learn a lot from NYC.

“In Texas we spend around $60-65K per year for children locked up in TYC – more for those with significant mental or physical healthcare needs – so $17K would be an inexpensive alternative, even here where we spend much less than New York,” he writes.

Later, he concludes,

Community-based services aren’t a cure-all for juvenile crime, but neither are youth prisons, which are a lot more expensive and which we already know don’t prevent recidivism. As the Youth Commission and the juvenile probation system go through “Sunset” review in the coming year, I hope this model – which coincides with and complements the recommendations of the “Blue Ribbon Panel” – is the direction they take things.

TYC officials are holding an oversight hearing this morning, Henson explains in a more recent post. That hearing, in turn, prompted this strong editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News, which calls on State Senator John Whitmire to “crank up the heat” in discussions with fresh-face TYC conservator Richard Nedelkoff.

[Hat tip, of course, to Henson, and a plug to boot. If you've never stopped by Grits for Breakfast, do. You can't find better daily commentary on criminal justice in the Lone Star State, and it's a top-notch resource for those interested in tracking developments in the never-ending TYC scandal.]

Promising Incarceration Alternatives in NYC

The New York Times Metro section took a look yesterday at the city’s Juvenile Justice Initiative, a promising alternative incarceration program that keeps medium-risk offenders at home and provides intensive therapy. “Until the Juvenile Justice Initiative, family court judges had few options for dealing with youngsters convicted of less-serious crimes,” the paper reports. “They could place them on probation and hope for the best, or send them to upstate residential centers. The decision would typically depend as much on the gravity of the crime as on the stability of the child’s family. Judges are more likely to send a child into state custody if the home situation is complicated or unsafe.”

In the program’s first year, the paper notes, “fewer than 35 percent of the 275 youths who have been through it have been rearrested or violated probation.” Costs, naturally, are lower than those associated with incarceration, as well. The program is off to a great start, an important piece in the comprehensive plan put forward by the state Office of Children and Family Services to shut down a batch of underused prisons upstate.

File Under “Fargo”

From the AP:

A high school senior accused of trying to pay hit men $260 to kill his adoptive parents had always been a ”very good child,” his mother said through tears Wednesday.

Jacob A. Jett, 18, allegedly gave the money and three handguns to two men as part of the plot to kill Richard and Robyn Parnell, according to prosecutors.

”He thought they were too strict,” and wanted to inherit money, Jackson County prosecutor Jim Kanatzar said.

Jett and a fellow student accused of introducing him to the would-be hit men were charged with second-degree attempted murder and armed criminal action. Jett and Joseph R. Garcia, 17, were being held in lieu of $250,000 cash bonds and were to be arraigned Wednesday.

Parnell, 48, said her son was adopted as an infant and that he was their only child. She said she had not slept since the arrests and that her 53-year-old husband was also ”not doing so good.”

”It came out of nowhere,” said Robyn Parnell. ”He was a very good child.”

It was unclear if either teen had a lawyer. Robyn Parnell would not comment about plans for representation, and a woman who answered the phone at the Garcia home hung up.

Jett and Garcia attended Truman High School in Independence, where Garcia was a junior. Jett allegedly contacted Garcia to find out if he knew anyone who ”may have been willing to facilitate a murder-for-hire,” the prosecutor said.

Garcia introduced Jett to the two would-be hit men at a Kansas City home in January, authorities said. One of the men was later picked up for a parole violation and told police about the alleged scheme on Friday.

Police on Monday contacted the second man, who corroborated the story. Neither of the men hired to kill the Parnells were charged, Kanatzar said, and authorities didn’t believe they intended to actually carry out the plot.

”I think they saw it as an easy way to get $260,” he said.

He said Jett also gave the men three handguns from Mr. Parnell’s collection, a parent’s ATM card and a PIN number, as well as the security code for the family’s home.

The attempted second-degree murder charge carries a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years, and the armed criminal action carries a sentence of 3 years to life in prison, Kanatzar said.

Defendant in Shaloh Joseph Case Enters Not Guilty Plea

The 12-year-old Florida boy facing second-degree-murder charges for killing his 17-month-old cousin, Shaloh Joseph, entered a not guilty plea in Broward County juvenile court on Monday. News here. Background here.

Mississippi to Shutter Notorious Girls’ Prison

Some successes are measured; others are unqualified. This one is the latter. Seven months ago the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against the State of Mississippi, citing abusive conditions at the Columbia Training School, a notorious girls’ prison. On Thursday, the Clarion-Ledger reported, lawmakers announced that they will shut the prison down.