DON'T TEACH OUR CHILDREN CRIME PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #370 - Thursday, 3 July 2008 The New York Times printed the editorial below today, Thursday. The editorial does not mention that our young people are often jailed as a result of violating our draconian drug laws - which makes the editorial a good target for your letters. Please also contact your Senator both to support the bill and to request that it be strengthened. Contacts for your Senator are at http://drugsense.org/url/qhe2AeDy Letter to the Editor of the New York Times should be sent quickly as the newspaper usually prints letters resulting from editorials within a few days - while the editorial itself is still fresh in their readers minds. The average letter printed in the newspaper is about 140 words in length. Printed letters over 200 words are rare. Printed letters tend to focus on one specific point in their editorials. Yesterday the New York Times published an editorial "Not Winning the War on Drugs" which was the subject of the alert at http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0369.html Thank You to everyone who has already sent a letter to the newspaper about that alert. Since the paper did not print any letters in response to that editorial today, your letter, if sent soon, could still be printed. Pubdate: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2008 The New York Times Company Contact: Don't Teach Our Children Crime Under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the states agreed to humanize their often Dickensian juvenile justice systems in exchange for increased federal aid. This promising arrangement collapsed in the 1990s during hysteria about an adolescent crime wave that never materialized. The states intensified all kinds of punishments for children and sent large numbers to adult jails where, research has shown, they are more likely to be battered, traumatized and transformed into hard-core, recidivist criminals. Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the law, and it ought to bar the states from housing children in adult jails, except for the most heinous crimes. Sadly, the updated version of the law, recently introduced in the Senate, falls short of that goal. But it does include a number of farsighted measures that discourage the placement of children in adult jails during the pretrial period and expands protections for children charged as adults. The need for these measures is alarmingly evident in a report issued last year by the Campaign for Youth Justice, an advocacy group. The report found that as many as 150,000 people under the age of 18 are held in adult jails in any given year. More than half of young people who are transferred into the adult system are never convicted as adults -- and many are never convicted at all. The Senate bill takes a comprehensive approach to these issues. It would considerably tighten rules aimed at keeping children out of adult jails during pretrial periods. Children arrested for truancy, running away or other offenses that would not be criminal if committed by an adult would not be placed in juvenile jail unless absolutely necessary. It also would require the states to work toward reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. It increases federal funding for technical assistance and for drug treatment, mental health care, mentoring and after-care programs that keep children out of the juvenile system in the first place. The bill advocates an evidence-based approach to hand out the money. Jailing and criminalizing young Americans causes a lot more crime than it punishes or prevents. This bill represents an important step toward rational and compassionate justice for troubled children. Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides Or contact MAP's Media Activism Facilitator for tips on how to write LTEs that are printed. PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent letter list ( ) if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others can learn from your efforts. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( ) will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource =.

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