Evaluation of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice Agency's Ethics and Integrity

Racial discrimination remains one of the continuous events within the American justice systems yet to be entirely eradicated. Leiber & Peck (2013) state that there exists an over-representation of the minority youth in correctional facilities serving life without parole, many of whom were sentenced while legally classified as juveniles. Many of them are black Americans. Minorities youths face different treatment as compared to whites in juvenile facilities and courts. Changes have occurred in the structure and procedures of the juvenile systems, but the influence of racial bias has persisted (Birckhead 2017). It becomes the administrative responsibility of minor justice organizations to ensure zero racial discrimination within their organizations. Other stakeholders, such as the police and juvenile courts, have contributed to the situation. The police often handle the minority youths harshly, while judges evaluate their testimony based on their race. Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice has the responsibility of ensuring that they practice zero tolerance to racial discrimination within their system. Rulings made by judges based on the races of the youthful offenders are unethical, so does how police carry out their arrest. Illegal entry by immigrants into the U.S. border from the Central American countries also affect juvenile justice agencies. A policy that facilitated the separation of kids from their parents was one of the significant events at the Center of Public Integrity two years ago. The decision by President Trump's administrators to separate kids from their parents at the border stems aimed at blocking the undocumented migration into the United States. The Presidents later signed an executive order to keep the migrant families together during court proceedings. According to NBC News, as of October 2019, the U.S. Immigration authorities had separated more than 1,500 children from their parents at the Mexico border (Ferriss, 2018). The event would see juvenile justice encounter more young immigrants and questions asked whether it would be ethical to detain them. Members of the public and other organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics called for the immediate end to the policy as it was unethical and contradicted everything the organization stands for. The procedure was called a form of child abuse. The organization would want to ensure the protection of the Americans from the youths whose characters are not known while at the same time, detaining them when they cross borders in search of safety would be unethical. Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice team of management comprises of a Commissioner, Chief of Staff, an Assistant Commissioner, and four deputy commissioners. The organization is operated under a transformational leadership, in which the commissioner works with his management team to ensure necessary changes occur while creating a vision to guide it. The current commissioner Tyrone Oliver was appointed in July 2019 by governor Brian Kemp. The appointment of the commissioner by the sitting Republican Governor means that the party influences the operations of the facility. An appointee of the Governor can either lead to the success or failure of the agency in carrying out its mandate since political affiliation may influence the appointment. In a little more than five years, the agency has had five commissioners and five different assistants. The new commissioners are often unable to attest to what happened before they assumed office. Policies passed by political leaders also influence the agency. Neely (2017) notes that reforms by political leaders to lower government spending influence the operations of juvenile detention centers. With an increase in juvenile crimes, limited funds would render the already full facilities incompetent. Additionally, policies passed by political leaders also influence the success of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. For example, the Georgia Juvenile Reform Act of 2013 placed into action in 2014 was applied to release juveniles not extremely bad back into society (Neely, 2017). Thus through the policy, political leaders contributed to the success of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice by reducing congestion and expenditure. There have been reports of alleged sexual contact between teenagers and staff at the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. The leaders of the agency also play critical roles that lead to its success or failure. Some correctional officers handle the youthful offenders ruthlessly, which may lead to lawsuits on the agency. Consequently, resources that would otherwise help in achieving the success of the agency are used in legal battles. Additionally, some officers within the agency have been accused of sexual involvement with the young offenders, which further hinds its quest to achieve its mission. Furthermore, While intending to accomplish its mission, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice has had to make several judicial decisions. In a case involving Juantavious Moore, the plaintiff who was incarcerated at the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice Sumter Youth Development Campus and Jacob Stephens as the defendant, (Moore v. Stephens, 2018), claimed that while he had lunch, the defendant, the institution's correctional officer, harassed him. He approached him, handcuffed him, and escorted him out of the cafeteria, and once outside, he threw the plaintiff to the ground, who then suffered a spiral fracture and a scar on his face. After investigations, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice determined that there was sufficient evidence to support the allegations of inappropriate use of physical intervention against captain Jacob Stephens who was then fired by the organization. Therefore, the agency has powers to sack any officer who bars its mission of supporting and protecting the youths for whom they care.

The agency has powers to offer probation and parole careers. It provides supervision, supportive counseling, cases management and treatment services to juvenile offenders. However, the enforcement of the agency's regulations faces several challenges. First, it encounters political influence, which often makes several decisions challenging to make. The policies implemented by the stakeholders in politics have a massive impact on how the agency operates. The agency has various strategies for improving its operations and services. The first strategy for improving leadership through leadership summits. A 2017 leadership summit featured administrators from the Office of Health, Office of Behavioral Health Services, Office of Training, and that of Classification Assessment and Transportation, which offered career training and long term strategic planning for the division. The summit facilitated team building and an understanding of the general responsibilities of each officer within the division. Additionally, the agency intends to promote strategic recruitment, retention, and succession, a measure to improve leadership, quality of the workforce, and administrative ethics. It would ensure that the services provided are of high quality since the process of service provision would have minimally interfered with the existence of high levels of employee retention. The agency also continues to facilitate functional family therapy. It plans to increase outreach to families through family-centered events, which would help reduce recidivism and thus improve the quality of services offered to the youths. Furthermore, it would facilitate regular youth communications with parents and guardians, whose engagement the agency understands to be a cornerstone in the provision of their services. To improve its legal mandate, the agency plans to collaborate more with juvenile justice advocates. To facilitate administrative ethics, the agency will provide more training for staff on effective family engagement strategies, which will include sensitivity training, trauma-informed care, and cultural awareness. To engage the families more, the agency needs to implement a Parent Cafe, which would help improve interactions, service delivery, and communication among parents and families of youths under the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice care. Improvements in the interactions of youthful offenders will help speed up their processes of recovery. Functional family therapies would help children at risk and delinquent juveniles to overcome their challenges such as substance abuse, conduct disorder, and disobedience. Family therapists would help assess family behaviors that promote criminal behaviors and train them to bargain efficiently and help their children recover. To facilitate strategic recruitment and succession planning, the agency needs to realign the human resources administrative functions to create a more accessible support system. Additionally, a more satisfying data repository needs to be developed to collate more than five recruiting indicators, which will support the development of a recruiting plan. To retain qualified workers, the agency can ensure no worker encounters discrimination, and that promotions are done equally. Besides, they need to provide opportunities for their officers to evaluate themselves and improve on their work.

References

Birckhead, T. R. (2017). The racialization of juvenile justice and the role of the defense attorney. BCL, Rev., 58, 379.

Ferriss, S. (2018, June 19). What’s behind the policy separating kids from their parents at the border? The Center of Public Integrity. Retrieved from: https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/immigration/whats-behind-the-policy-separating-kids-from-their-parents-at-the-border/ 

Leiber, M. J., & Peck, J. H. (2013). Race in Juvenile Justice and Sentencing.

Moore v. Stephens, Civil Action No. 5: 17-cv-00461-TES (M.D. Ga. May 3, 2018).

Neely, P. (2017). Juvenile Accountability; The Intake Process. International Journal of Secondary Education, 5(2), 16.

Russell, J., & Manske, E. (2017). Achieving juvenile justice reforms through decision-making structures: The case of Georgia. Journal of Juvenile Justice, 6(1), 98-111.