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Day two of David Pecker testimony wraps in NY Trump trial; Supreme Court hears arguments on Idaho's near-total abortion ban; ND sees a flurry of campaigning among Native candidates; and NH lags behind other states in restricting firearms at polling sites.

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The Senate moves forward with a foreign aid package. A North Carolina judge overturns an aged law penalizing released felons. And child protection groups call a Texas immigration policy traumatic for kids.

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Wyoming needs more educators who can teach kids trade skills, a proposal to open 40-thousand acres of an Ohio forest to fracking has environmental advocates alarmed and rural communities lure bicyclists with state-of-the-art bike trail systems.

Advocate: Wisconsin Needs Alternatives to Putting Kids in Jail

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Wednesday, December 10, 2014   

MADISON, Wis. - The United States leads the industrialized world in the rate at which it puts young people in prison, according to a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

About 1,000 juveniles now are in jail in Wisconsin. Jim Moeser, deputy director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, said there are viable alternatives to locking kids up.

"Additional supervision programs that can be created at the local level," he said. "There are programs that work with kids who have mental health issues, and wraparound-style programs, coordinated service teams - really trying to address a lot of the underlying issues and work with the family to keep the youth in the community as much as possible."

The vast majority of kids locked up in the United States, according to the report, are being held for nonviolent offenses. Even though fewer kids are locked up now compared with a decade ago, Moeser said, the juvenile crime rate continues to fall.

Since 1996, Wisconsin law has required that 17-year-olds automatically be sent to adult court, a fact of which Moeser says a lot of people, including a lot of state legislators, are not aware.

"It's a surprising number of people who think that judges still have some discretion in this stuff, and they don't," he said. "It's '17-year-old - you're an adult' and you can't be sent back to juvenile court."

Moeser said the old "law and order, lock 'em up" approach to juvenile justice has never worked. He said more humane and effective responses to delinquency need to be developed. A conviction in adult court can stay with a 17-year-old for a long time, and affect their ability to get a job and obtain housing. Moeser says they don't get the same level of services in the adult system as they can get in the juvenile system to get them back on track.

"We just think all kids really should have a second chance," he said. "The juvenile system, I think, just does a much better job identifying the underlying issues and addressing them."

The report and additional information are online at aecf.org.


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