Trevor Maxwell
Portland Press Herald
PORTLAND — Last winter, as phone calls started to come in from concerned judges across the state, Maine’s chief justice saw a crisis brewing in the state’s juvenile justice system.
The number of children being sent from their hometowns to corrections facilities was on the rise. It wasn’t just the most seriously at-risk juveniles, but those who would benefit most from other types of support, not placement at youth centers in South Portland or Charleston.
''The community-based services were not there,’' Leigh Saufley, chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, said at a news conference Thursday.
In response, the Judicial Branch worked with the state’s Children’s Cabinet and the University of Maine School of Law this spring to establish a 70-member Juvenile Justice Task Force. The task force came up with a list of preliminary recommendations to improve the system.
Today, at a daylong summit at the Augusta Civic Center, more than 350 judges, lawyers, legislators, educators and social service providers are scheduled to review the recommendations, refine them and discuss the future of community-based responses to juvenile crime.
''This is an opportunity to have a real impact ... in remaking the juvenile justice system in Maine,’' said Peter Pitegoff, dean of the University of Maine School of Law. He co-chairs the task force with Saufley and first lady Karen Baldacci.
From the perspective of Saufley and Pitegoff, the key to reducing the number of children in the criminal justice system is to increase the number of children who stay in school.
That means a focus on early intervention and support for kids who are at risk but still attending school.
- One of the top three goals of the Juvenile Justice Task Force is to increase Maine’s high school graduation rate from 81 percent to 90 percent by 2016.
- The second goal is to reduce the reliance on incarceration and pretrial detention by 20 percent in the next three years.
- The third goal is to build community-based services and programs that emphasize the connections of young people to school, their families and communities.
In its preliminary report, the task force said that ''leaving school is the single most significant predictor of negative youth outcomes. Youth who leave school are twice as likely to be unemployed, three times as likely to live in poverty, twice as likely to become the parent of a dropout, and more likely to end up in prison.’'
The task force will remain intact throughout the legislative session, and a final report with recommendations will be delivered to the Legislature and social service agencies in the spring, Saufley said.
Copyright 2009 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.