SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2010 COLBERT I. KING


Marc Schindler as interim director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Ser- vices, and the departure of two Schin- dler deputies, are a setback for juvenile reforms. Fenty was confronted with overwhelming evidence of serious and recurring DYRS management problems that threaten public safety. He reacted, as a chief executive should. The shakeup was overdue. Events in the first five months of this year forced Fenty’s hand. At least nine youths in DYRS custody were arrested for murder; two others became homi- cide victims. Fenty correctly ordered a review of DYRS operations. The probe, conducted by D.C. Attor-


D.C.’s long-overdue juvenile justice shakeup W


oefully misinformed are those who claim that Mayor Adrian Fenty’s removal this week of


placing offenders in the community, and the city’s juvenile crime rates. Among its findings:


ney General Peter Nickles, produced findings that left Fenty with little choice: Change DYRS’s leadership. (DYRS spokesman Reggie Sanders said Marc Schindler was not available to talk with me about the report.) The Office of the Attorney General be- gan by looking into the cases of youth in department custody who were mur- dered or charged with murder this year, those who were rearrested for murder, and those who were charged with as- sault with attempt to murder since 2009. The OAG reviewed the department’s ad- vertised recidivism rate, escapes, the de- partment’s methods for classifying and


 DYRS measures recidivism too nar- rowly. A 2008 DYRS report asserted that 25 percent of youth committed to depart- ment care reoffend within a year. The department, however, defines recidi- vism as conviction within one year of be- ing placed or returned to the communi- ty. It excludes rearrests or reconvictions in jurisdictions other than the District — although arrests and convictions of D.C. juveniles commonly occur in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, the attorney general’s office noted. The investigation used a measure of recidivism provided by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; its factors include rearrest and referrals to court for non-criminal matters such as curfew violations. The Justice Department recidivism guidance was applied to the cases of 79 youths committed to DYRS for the first time in the first quarter of 2008. The re- sults were stunning.


Since their commitment just over two years ago, 71 percent had new convic- tions, and 42 percent of those convic- tions were for offenses such as robbery, weapons assault and drugs. Moreover, 23 percent of those with new convictions were convicted in the adult system.


Those numbers don’t even include DYRS youth in the D.C. jail awaiting trial on adult charges.  DYRS has a weak policy on abscon- dence and oversight. The investigation found several in- stances where youths disappeared for several days without DYRS requesting the required custody order (or arrest warrant) from the court. In one case, a youth was gone for several weeks before an order was sought. In another case, DYRS gave a third-party monitor “a number of” days to locate a missing youth, and no one sought a custody or- der.  DYRS has a flawed method of decid- ing youth placement. The investigation found that DYRS considers only the terms of a youth’s conviction, known as “adjudication,” in determining a youth’s risk level for placement. It does not take into account the circumstances or facts of the crime or the youth’s criminal history. For example, if a youth commits an armed robbery but pleads guilty to robbery or theft, DYRS considers the lesser offense in deciding where to place the offender. The investigation concluded that


DYRS procedures and practices favor re- lease to the community without regard to youths’ needs, past criminal acts or potential for reoffending.  DYRS has lax rules on community placements.


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The investigation found several cases of youths violating the terms of their re- lease agreements yet being moved to less restrictive placements. Moreover, it not- ed, DYRS files showed no signs of youths being penalized — with, for example, ad- ditional time, more restrictions or loss of privileges. Youth also were moved through group homes and allowed to return to their homes without regard to how well they were doing or whether they had been re- habilitated. Regarding DYRS claims of decreasing juvenile crime, the investigation found that juvenile arrests are rising in abso- lute numbers, reaching a high of almost 550 arrests for serious violent crimes such as homicide, rape and robbery in 2009, and that this is happening as vio- lent crime for adults is substantially de- creasing. The attorney general’s office present-


ed Fenty with several recommendations to strengthen the juvenile justice pro- gram. The most striking one called for more secure facilities for juveniles. The much-heralded $46 million New Begin- nings, a 60-bed detention facility in Lau- rel, is, as predicted, already overcrowd- ed.


I’ve written more than 30 columns critical of DYRS since 2007. Fenty can’t say he wasn’t warned. Credit him with fi- nally acting.


kingc@washpost.com


Getting away with murder in Indonesia


by Suciwati


training to Indonesia’s special forces unit, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates spoke about the Indonesian military’s re- forms and said it is prepared to ensure accountability for any human rights abuses by its soldiers. My experience with Indonesia’s special forces and its justice system lead me to think President Obama is making a dangerous mistake. My husband, the late Munir Said Tha- lib, was one of Indonesia’s most promi- nent human rights leaders. He was close in age to and had much in common with President Obama. Munir, too, worked as a community organizer, helping the weak, the poor and victims of political re- pression. Both men spoke the language of human rights, and both received inter- national recognition for their contribu- tions to humanity: Obama won the No- bel Peace Prize; Munir won Sweden’s prestigious Right Livelihood Award in 2000. Obama’s boyhood home in Jakar- ta’s Menteng neighborhood is a short dis- tance from the office of Kontras, the hu- man rights organization where my hus- band worked. Like the Obamas, my husband and I


I


had two beautiful children, now ages 11 and 7. Unlike Malia and Sasha, my chil- dren have lost their father. In September 2004, my husband was


Drawing Board BY ROGERS FOR THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE BY SIGNE WILKINSON FOR THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS


fatally poisoned on a flight from Indone- sia to the Netherlands. Nearly six years later, no one has been held accountable for ordering his murder. Indonesian courts have found three people guilty of directly causing Munir’s death: two employees of the airline and an off-duty Garuda pilot who was also an intelligence agent. These individuals had no personal motive to kill my husband. All indications are that they did not act on their own initiative. Yet authorities have not determined whether other members of the security or intelligence services ordered Munir’s death. In De- cember 2008, a senior intelligence offi- cial, Maj. Gen. Muchdi Purwopranjono, was acquitted of ordering the murder in a trial that our National Commission on Human Rights has called seriously flawed. Indonesian police and the Office of the Attorney General have taken no further steps to resolve the case. Years earlier, Muchdi Purwopranjono lost his job in Kopassus, the special forces, after my husband revealed the general’s involvement in the abduction and torture of pro-reform student activ- ists in the late 1990s. I helped Munir in- vestigate the disappearances. Munir also brought to light allegations of Kopassus’s involvement in other serious human rights abuses in East Timor and Papua, and he strongly opposed the brutal prac- tices of the Indonesian military — in- cluding Kopassus — in the province of Aceh. The United States rightly refused to


BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION BY JOEL PETT FOR THE LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER


migrants are being found in the Arizona desert this month, the Associated Press reported, that the Pima County Medical Examiner was stacking them like boxes of fish in a refrigerated truck. Forty bodies were found in just the first half of the month. Last year, 317 Americans died fighting in Afghanistan. Guess how many mi- grants, mostly Mexicans searching for work, died crossing illegally into Amer- ica? The Border Patrol collected 422 bod- ies in the last fiscal year, part of a rising trend.


And most die in the desert. Here is how Luis Alberto Urrea, in his book, “The Dev- il’s Highway,” described what happens: “Dehydration had reduced all your in- ner streams to sluggish mudholes. . . . Your sweat runs out. . . . Your temperature redlines — you hit 105, 106, 108 degrees. . . . Your muscles, lacking water, feed on themselves. They break down and start to rot. . . . The system closes down in a series.


The human toll of immigration gridlock T


by Edward Schumacher-Matos


he article was largely buried in most newspapers, if run at all. So many bodies of unauthorized


Your kidney, your bladder, your heart.” Yet these deaths figure little in the de-


bate over immigration. There is faint sense of scandal, of tragedy or, certainly, of urgency to agree on a solution. The ex- tremists rule, with one side calling for more enforcement and the other saying enforcement doesn’t work. The former has the louder voice today, making it the bigger culprit, but the latter — humanitarian groups, for one — share in the blame. They seem not to find any enforcement policy they like, abandoning responsibility. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, is caught in the middle, a Gulliver tied by Lilliputians and unable to take command of the fight. If our nation’s legislators felt free to vote their conscience and intelligence, it’s a good bet that at least 80 percent of the Senate and two-thirds of the House would vote now for a comprehensive immigra- tion package. It would include a robust temporary worker program, improved workplace enforcement, recruitment of highly skilled immigrants and a pathway to legalization for the estimated 10.8 mil- lion unauthorized immigrants here. There would be wrangling over the de-


tails, but the agreement on these princi- ples is no secret among Washington in- siders in the debate. The rest of the coun- try just doesn’t know it. In polling, most Americans say much the same about those principles, but our solons, unable to see beyond the Novem- ber elections, timidly cow to the extrem- ists in their political bases. What might help some of them find their spine? The president must first find his. A good place to begin is on the U.S.-


Mexico border. The first of the 1,200 Na- tional Guard troops President Obama has ordered to the border arrive Aug. 1. The president should make a dramatic gesture and send as many as 10,000 more. Instead of the 500 going to Arizona, he should up the force there to at least the 3,000 that Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl are asking for. The gesture is mostly political — the Guard is not trained for border patrolling — but political action is what’s needed now. This would reassure the American middle that the government is in control and give legislators the cover they need. Besides, the temporary show of force may deter more immigrants from cross-


ing the desert and dying. The second thing the president should do is reach a quick deal with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on a temporary worker program. The chamber went off the deep end with its recent diatribe that the administration is anti-business, but the business side of the Republican Party must be re-empowered against the immi- gration restrictionists of the Tea Party movement, on this issue and much more. Employers want such a program, and no amount of enforcement will work without legal avenues to help them fill jobs that Americans can’t or won’t do at competitive wage levels. The alternative is to do nothing and


have more scenes such as that of 29-year- old Jorge Garcia. On his way last year to rejoin his family, Garcia, a diabetic, was found in the Japul Mountains on the bor- der with California, dead from what coro- ners later said was a lack of insulin. Clutched in his fingers was a photo of his daughters.


Edward Schumacher-Matos is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. His e-mail address is edward.schumachermatos@ yahoo.com.


support Kopassus because of its mem- bers’ involvement in these and other in- cidents of abuse. But the Obama admin- istration, seeking to improve ties with In- donesia, has agreed to allow training to resume if the government will ensure that those convicted of abuse would be moved out of Kopassus. Promises to shift abusers out of Kopas- sus and into other military units are sim- ply not enough. Members of Kopassus have no fear that they will be prosecuted for serious wrongdoing. The special forces protect members who are impli- cated in such abuses. Even the few who have been convicted by military courts are largely still serving. This will not change until members of the security service who have committed abuses are brought to justice. The U.S. decision also undercuts the work of civil society groups. In March four prominent Indonesian non-govern- mental human rights organizations sug- gested strict conditions for any U.S. reen- gagement with Kopassus, noting that “nothing has been done to restore the rights of the victims or punish those who were responsible.” The Obama administration opted for a lower standard for reengagement than what we in Indonesian civil society have asked for, even as the Pentagon points to meetings with people like me as evidence of Indonesia’s transition to a rights- respecting democracy. Indonesia has made much progress on the road to democracy and stability, but enhancing the reach of a powerful mili- tary force that lacks respect for the rule of law jeopardizes those hard-fought gains. Obama is rewarding Kopassus without requiring accountability. I fear that the Indonesian security services will again get away with murder. The people of Indonesia have faith in Obama’s humanitarian values, partic- ularly his power to encourage positive change in our country. The next steps for his administration are clear: Reverse the decision to train Kopassus in the ab- sence of such change and persuade President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to honor Indonesia’s international obli- gations for justice. Help me give my chil- dren an answer about their father’s murder.


The writer was married to Indonesian human rights activist Munir Thalib, who was killed in 2004.


jakarta


n announcing this week that the Unit- ed States would lift a 12-year-long ban on providing military assistance and


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