We're talking about statewide juvenile justice reform.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

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(Kipp Ortenburger) Amongst the rush of bills being hotly debated in the last week of Nevada's 81st legislative session, an unprecedented number of juvenile justice reform bills are receiving bipartisan support.

In fact, more bills this year are nearing final passage than each of the last two previous legislative sessions.

Now, juvenile justice in this case is the broader system youth come into contact with when breaking the law.

This includes law enforcement, the courts, correction agencies, and of course rehabilitative programs.

Now, current state reform comes on the heels of statewide efforts over the last several years to collectively examine and report on gaps in the juvenile justice system and also analyze how this system contributes to safety and rehabilitation or more crime and an entry point for youth into the greater criminal justice system.

On today's show, we'll discuss recent findings.

We'll also discuss the importance of juvenile justice reform and its potential impact on school and community safety, and of course we'll take a look at some bills going through session right now and what future reform might take shape.

Please welcome Julianna Melendez, youth legislator representing Senate District 10 of the Nevada Youth Legislature; Pauline Salla-Smith, director of Humboldt County Juvenile Services and a member of the statewide Juvenile Justice Oversight Commission, and Kathryn Roose, deputy administrator at the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services.

I want to jump right into the topics.

As I mentioned in the intro, an unprecedented amount of bills going through state legislation right now with bipartisan support ranging from youth rights and penalties to training, housing provisions and organizational changes.

I want to come to-- Kathryn, let's start with you.

What does our current juvenile justice system-- why do we need reform?

(Kathryn Roose) Well, thank you for having me today, and you're right, we have a lot of great bills in the legislative session this year that are focused on juvenile justice reform.

And why is it so important?

Well, we have a really unique opportunity to have an impact in these youths' lives, you know, early on, and to really make a difference by enhancing the services that we provide in the juvenile justice system and to really stop that-- those habits and those behaviors and to really-- honestly, our ultimate goal is to keep them out of the system, to keep them from coming back to the juvenile justice system and also to keep them out of the adult system.

-Such a big part of this is safety of course, public safety, school safety.

Obviously we can make the leap that if we're keeping youth out of the system early on of course, then we're not going to have maybe as many of the issues with crime.

How big of a focus is that when we're looking at juvenile justice reform?

-So juvenile justice is different than the adult system in that when a youth enters the juvenile justice system, they're not given a sentence, right?

So a certain crime doesn't equal 12 months in a juvenile facility or 18 months in a juvenile facility.

The focus is really around programming, and the youth will be in a facility or be in the juvenile justice system for as long as it takes to achieve program goals, to receive the services that they need, to assist their family with any needs that the family has to better support that youth when they come home.

So really we are taking-- it's definitely a public safety approach.

How can we get them the support and services that they need so when they return to their communities, they have some more skills and more support?

-Julianna, I want to go to you.

You're a member of the Nevada Youth Legislature, we'll get to that in just a second, but you're also a senior and you're also student body president at Valley High School.

Let's talk about that perspective first.

Let's talk a little bit about the school justice part of this.

You as a school leader, where are you seeing the biggest need related to maybe school justice or juvenile justice?

(JuliaNna Melendez) Thank you for having me today.

In regards to that question, what I'm seeing on the ground in schools personally, I've seen it at Valley, I've seen at other high schools that I visited, is the concern related to school police and sort of their behavior towards students at school throughout the school day, especially minority students.

I know because Valley has one of the highest rates of minority students.

There is that big issue of racial bias in juvenile justice, and that's undeniable.

There's statistics and everything to back it up.

So on the ground what I'm seeing is students have a general distrust towards school police because they see them every day.

They see how they behave.

They see how they're treated, or maybe how they're treated unfairly.

So that's the biggest issue seeing firsthand.

-Pauline, I want to go to you.

Let's talk a little bit about the data and the evidence here.

There are state reports that the Juvenile Justice Oversight Committee, of which you are part of, has come up with a strategic plan that's very evidence-based.

Maybe we start with what Julianna was talking about right there, the presence of school police.

Of course I was doing some research and looking back on this up-ramp, it seemed, in the '80s and '90s.

Some of the no-tolerance, zero-tolerance policies increased a lot of school police.

Is that something the Juvenile Justice Oversight Committee is looking at?

(Pauline Salla-Smith) Thank you for having me today, and yes, of course that's one of the priority areas for the Juvenile Justice Oversight Commission, because our focus is really to eliminate disparate treatment across the board.

I think that, you know, we have local jurisdictions who have their data and then we have the statewide data, and it varies.

It just varies so much between Southern Nevada, Northern Nevada, our rural areas, and I think that one of the important things for us to all remember is that training is so important across the board, right?

Because we have school resource officers in our schools here also.

We're in Winnemucca, Nevada which is a small rural town in Northern Nevada, and they really play an active role in developing relationships with the kids in school.

We work closely together.

We try not to make any kind of relationship adversarial, which actually helps in us eliminating disparate treatment across the board.

So I think with the oversight commission, we're really looking at the totality of the data and then drilling down to what each local jurisdiction needs to meet the needs to start working on that data.

And I do think with disparate treatment, we have so many different points of contact in our juvenile justice system from arrest to certification to the adult system, that the oversight commission wants to see at what point of contact is there disparate treatment and what intervention could we place at that specific point of contact in that jurisdiction to help make a difference?

-Can you give us some context?

And let's talk about an urban area like Southern Nevada first.

Where are we seeing the biggest disparities?

-I believe, and I'm trying to think of our statewide data because I really-- I've been focusing on our Humboldt County data so much.

-Well, I tell you what, let's go-- if we can, Kathryn, let's go to you here, and I'll just use some of the report findings.

This is from the Department of Child and Family Services government report.

Let's just start with referrals.

Referrals, 29% of youth referrals, black and African American youth, but they only comprise-- African American black youth only comprise roughly 15% of our population.

As we go down in severity, that gap seems to widen.

Arrests, 32% black African American, and again only 15% of our population, and then youth being tried as adults, 44%.

That seems to be a pretty large disparity there.

-Yes, and when we talk about the juvenile justice system, we often talk about the shallow end and the deep end of the system, and what we mean when we say that is a youth's first contact with the juvenile justice system is typically within their counties, and that may be a county probation department or a youth camp, and then we talk-- as you go deeper into the system, that's where they really touch the DCFS juvenile justice system, so that includes our three state facilities and our youth parole bureau.

And what we find unfortunately, and this is a national trend, this is not unique to Nevada, is we do have disparity at every point of contact, and the disparity does get worse the deeper we go into the system.

So we do find, you know, disparate outcomes at each point of contact but really, it's more so in the certification, which would be in the deep end of the system.

It's more in our state facilities.

So when we talk about racial and ethnic disparity in the juvenile justice system, really everybody can play a role to address that from the county to the state to law enforcement agencies to school police, right?

We all have a role to play in reducing racial and ethnic disparity.

-Pauline, let's go back to you then.

Let's talk about the rurals here.

What are some of the disparities you're seeing in rural communities like Humboldt County?

-So for us in Humboldt County, our disparate treatment was occurring with our Native American youth, because we actually have a reservation that's about 88 miles north of us that's fairly isolated and difficult to get services into, so one of the things that we really had to focus on was how come we're not reaching our kids, our Native American kids?

They're still getting referred to us, they're getting cited, they're getting arrested.

So the first critical piece that we had to do was really develop a relationship with our Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement because on reservation land, you know, we can't just enter on reservation land without an agreement.

That was our first one, and then we really had to figure out that we were creating some of the barriers ourselves by asking our kids and families to drive 88 miles to meet with us to see how we could help them.

That's not really a beneficial process when we started looking deeply at that, so we really just changed our process.

We go up there, we develop relationships with the school and BIA, and we can provide services within the school for our kids.

We can take whatever we need to get done, we can take them there.

We provide gas cards, we provide rides, whatever they need.

So I do think that disparate treatment can happen with any ethnic population, depending on the makeup of the jurisdiction, and that's really where the focus has to be.

We have to drill down on that data.

Even our data as we progress through the point of contacts in our system to our deep-end youth, I think it's really important for us to drill down on that data and look at the totality of the picture to see how we can do things different and what would be effective.

-Julianna, I want to come back to you.

Let's talk a little more specifically about the Nevada Youth Legislature's role, the legislature's role here in this.

Of course you have chosen, the legislature has chosen to focus on juvenile justice as your primary focus in this session.

Why is that?

-Originally, the Nevada Youth Legislature, how it works is each of the legislators, the youth legislators, presents a bill at our November meeting, and it relates to a topic that we believe the youth really care about.

We do outreach within our respective senate districts to try and see what do the youth want to focus on this year in terms of legislation?

So when I did outreach in my community, what I found was most important was juvenile justice, especially because during that time, we were seeing a lot on the news about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and how that impacts youth.

So when I presented my juvenile justice bill, I really advocated the fact that kids in my senate district really seemed to be-- it's a worldwide issue and not just a Senate District 10 issue, and we spoke about it.

We discussed, we had witnesses come in and advocate for or against our bills, and eventually we narrowed it down to that juvenile justice bill, which is SB108, the one that I originally presented.

So yes, we were just seeing a lot of support from the youth and we said hey, you know what?

It's time that somebody said something, and it's especially important for youth to speak up because we're seeing it on the ground every day, something that adults may not get to see in schools if they're not there.

-And to Julianna's point, Pauline, let's go to you here.

We are seeing a lot more juvenile justice bills than we had go through our state legislature, if we're comparing those to the last couple legislative sessions.

Why are we seeing so many bills come through right now?

-I always like to say that juvenile justice is the wisest investment in crime prevention we can make, so why wouldn't we have all those juvenile justice bills going through our legislators?

And I think we have been doing reform for several years.

This has been a long process, and I believe the switch went from just compliance and community supervision to really habilitating our young kids, our young children, our young adults so they can have healthy and successful lives.

Sometimes it's not even about rehabilitating.

It's about habilitating because they just might not have the skills they need.

So I mean, I think that as the years continue, we'll continue seeing juvenile justice bills.

These are the future of our state.

These young people have some of the best ideas, and sometimes they just need a little support and guidance to get where they need to be.

So I think the bills that have gone through since I want to say 2008, 2010 when we first started the reform, they just really keep getting us closer to having a really evidence-based juvenile justice system.

-Kathryn, I want to get your perspective too, getting closer to evidence-based juvenile justice system here.

Let's go back and let's talk about maybe some of that work over the last couple of legislative sessions and additional policy changes within the system itself.

What has improved in the system?

-Well, that's a great question.

A lot has improved.

AB472 was fantastic legislation out of the 2017 legislative session that really encouraged movement towards evidence-based practices in the juvenile justice system as a whole.

I think it's really important to keep an eye on what every state is doing, what every juvenile justice system is doing, because as we build more evidence for what works in other states, then we need to look at what we're doing in Nevada and adopt what makes sense for us.

And sometimes policy change happens without legislation, and sometimes policy change happens with legislation.

For example, in response to the George Floyd event last year, DCFS really looked at our use-of-force policy in our facilities, and we went ahead and made some updates to our policy in the absence of legislation requiring us to do so.

We used a framework called "8 Can't Wait."

It was a national movement to reform use-of-force policies.

We took what was relevant to our facilities and we adopted that into our policy, and we retrained our staff.

So it's really just important to keep an eye on where the evidence is being built.

AB472 required the adoption of an evidence-based risk assessment tool, so that has been a huge improvement in our system to use the same risk assessment tool across the state so we could track risk as youth moved through the system to not only use the risk assessment tool to match them with the appropriate services but to see if we're having an impact with the services that we're providing, so is that risk being reduced through these services?

It helps us to identify what services we need in our communities.

If we see risk, high levels of risk in our population in the substance use domain, we need to ensure that we have substance use services to match that population.

So really we should be always using our data, and we should be always matching what we find in our data with the appropriate services.

-And right there could be a potential challenge too.

Pauline, I want to come to you.

Give us an idea of that data, of course multiple agencies collecting data, sharing data.

The data might not always overlap in the same ways I would assume.

How good are we at having consistent, cohesive data throughout our state?

-Well, we're getting better, and we're getting closer because of AB472, and Kathryn's right.

While we're all using a validated and reliable risk assessment tool, that really helps us capture the same accurate data across the board.

And our case planning, we're all trained in the same way.

We match services to the domains that are identified on our risk and need assessment.

We have a data definition dictionary that we're all using to make sure we're reporting the same way.

And AB472 also made it mandatory for all the juvenile justice agencies, including the state, to use the same case management system so we can collect the same information.

We can share information with other juvenile justice agencies if our youth are moving through different jurisdictions or to different agencies.

So while we're not perfect yet, I definitely think we're on the right road.

-Julianna, I want to come to you.

Another big piece of this, you've already mentioned it already, youth voice is so important.

We see that Nevada Youth Legislature of course is part of that youth voice.

When you're assessing, especially the entire Nevada Youth Legislature, assessing juvenile justice reform, how have you identified-- have you identified that youth voice is a really key piece to this?

-Yes, definitely the youth voice is a critical part to this, because the Nevada Youth Legislature exists to represent youth in legislature.

That's our whole goal in the end for when we present a bill at a legislative session.

Without the youth voice, if we hadn't been doing outreach in our communities, if you hadn't come to us and told us what was important to them, we wouldn't have possibly came to the conclusion that juvenile justice is what we needed to focus on this year.

-Yes, and let's talk more specifically about SB108, you've already mentioned it.

It would require training for any employee that is in contact through the juvenile justice system with youth.

It did start off as a much broader bill that would include all of the criminal justice system.

It was narrowed down.

Do you think the bill as it currently stands right now is doing enough?

-Yes, I do.

We actually narrowed it down because initially having it encompass the entire criminal justice system was a bit out of the scope of what Nevada Youth Legislature focuses on, which is juveniles specifically.

But we are having it mandated that for everyone in the juvenile justice system who comes into contact with juveniles to have these trainings, to learn about how adverse childhood trauma affects youth like brain development, how that affects their responses to law enforcement and whatnot, overall to just have a system that really understands children more so than we do now and have them be able to better respond when they come in contact with juveniles.

-And I know that bill is headed towards a final floor vote, it looks like.

Do you feel pretty confident it's going to get final passage here?

-I really hope so.

We passed the pass to the Senate Judiciary and Assembly Judiciary committees, so hopefully the same goes for when it's presented on the floor.

-And again, some great bipartisan support on that bill as well.

Pauline, I want to go to you.

Other key bills that are moving their way through, and I just wanted to mention by my count we have about 18 bills that are related to the juvenile justice system in general.

About half of those have already reached final passage; both houses have voted and approved those.

A lot of them look like they're moving in that direction too.

Is there any one that stands out to you particularly?

-Thank you for asking me that question.

There has been so many bills, and actually one of our committees through the oversight commission has been tracking them and is working closely with our Nevada Association of Juvenile Justice Administrators.

So I'll speak just for me, but AB-- I believe it's 385-- I think that's the one that's the interim study for prevention activities for juvenile justice and reinvesting back into the community.

I'm excited about that one.

I think with reform of our juvenile justice system, the goal has always been to keep as many kids from the deep-end side of our system, which is our state correctional placements and youth parole, to keep them from entering that and keeping them in their own community.

So I think that bill fits very nicely in our reform.

If we're not escalating our kids into the system to the deep end, then I think it's a brilliant idea to reinvest in those communities that provide the services they need to keep our kids home, to keep our kids close to their families, to their schools, to their peers.

So I'm really excited about that.

I'm actually excited about several bills.

Any bill that really focuses on increasing our education and training, I'm a supporter of that.

I think we can never have too much of that or too much education.

I do appreciate the youth voice.

I think without that, we're missing a key component.

And I mean, we had bills on when we're interrogating youth, what needs to occur, juvenile Miranda, make sure the juvenile Miranda warning is given and was revised a little bit.

We have bills on some minor offenses like possession of alcohol and possession of marijuana that we don't want to escalate those youth into our system, but I am a firm believer is why I don't want to escalate those youth in our system, but I also want to make sure they get the services they need.

I think one of the primary differences between urban and rural areas is sometimes the juvenile justice agency in our rural areas are the agencies that provide the programming and the services and pay for treatment and pay for counseling, so while we want to not escalate them in the system, we still want them to be able to come to our agency to get the help.

-Thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show, please visit our website, vegaspbs.org/nevada-week.

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