Omaha World Herald. September 20, 2019
Deadlock over monitoring raises concern despite juvenile justice progress
In 2013, Nebraska officials began making needed changes in how the state handles juvenile offenders. The improved juvenile justice approach has achieved benefits, a new audit finds. It has provided more in-home services and proved more cost-efficient.
At the same time, a glaring shortcoming remains: The state Administrative Office of Probation needs to cooperate with Julie Rogers, the state inspector general for child welfare, to provide needed transparency for her investigations into teen suicides and suicide attempts in the juvenile justice system.
The state shifted control of the youths from the Department of Health and Human Services to Probation after pilot projects in Douglas County, North Platte and Scottsbluff/Gering indicated the benefits of such a change.
A report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation at the time found that Nebraska had the nation’s fourth-highest rate of youth incarceration.
Nebraska leaders rightly sought options to address the problem by boosting in-home and community-based services.
An audit released this week by the Legislature’s Performance Audit Committee analyzed the juvenile justice budget trends.
It’s encouraging that over three years, community-based services have increased as a share of Probation’s juvenile services budget while overall expenditures have fallen by 17%.
The decline stemmed in part from a drop in the number of youths served and a reduction in the number of youths in institutionalized group care, the most expensive level of treatment.
Spending for such “congregate care” declined over three years by 57% as the number of youths in that category was reduced by 45%.
Working to maintain cost effectiveness is a constant challenge, Probation officials stress. Taking on the juvenile duties has required increased spending on administration and supervision.
The transition by Probation leaders and staff members to assume these new duties was enormously complex and arduous, requiring a series of major adjustments. It’s a tribute to Probation’s professionalism that the change has brought notable benefits.
Juvenile justice work is inherently difficult, though, and individual cases can be especially challenging.
Suicides sometimes occur among delinquent youths. So do suicide attempts. The Legislature created the post of inspector general for child welfare in 2012 to monitor such incidents.
Oversight by an outside party helps agencies analyze procedures for possible improvement and is superior to relying solely on in-house study.
Such legislative oversight has shown its benefit repeatedly in Nebraska state government in regard to child welfare management, the prison system and the Beatrice State Developmental Center.
Rogers’ recently released annual report states that she abandoned her investigations into three suicides and 15 suicide attempts by youths under Probation supervision because of a lack of information. As of June 1018, Probation refused her requests to interview Probation staff and to receive data on the cases, the report said. Probation argues that Rogers, who works for the Legislature, is encroaching on the proper authority of the judicial branch, of which Probation is a part.
This stalemate between the inspector general’s office and Probation continues despite both parties assuring state senators in 2016 that they had negotiated an agreement on the matter. Last year Nebraska’s longtime ombudsman, Marshall Lux, wrote a lengthy memorandum to state senators expressing concern over the deadlock.
This stalemate ill serves the public interest. Oversight and accountability are crucial in state government, and certainly in matters involving the safety of the state’s young people. A clash between branches of government mustn’t get in the way of enabling the state to improve the care of vulnerable, and often emotionally fragile, youths.
Probation has made laudable achievements in taking on juvenile justice duties, but the stalemate with Rogers must end. Chief Justice Michael Heavican and Nebraska legislative leaders have an obligation to push for a resolution, once and for all, of this harmful stalemate.
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The Grand island Independent. September 17, 2019
Safety must take priority on the farm
With harvest approaching, farm safety is a huge concern in Central Nebraska. Everyone will be hurrying to get as much work done in as short a time as possible, while the weather is good.
Many farmers will be waiting later for their crops to mature, but they also must get the crop in before snow and freezing temperatures hurt the quality.
But it’s also important to recognize that throughout the year, men, women and children on farms throughout this area are doing dangerous jobs in order to feed the world and support their families.
At Husker Harvest Days last week, farm safety was an important topic, including at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s exhibit in conjunction with the Grain Handling Safety Coalition and Sukup Manufacturing Co. on a feature film, “SILO,” which deals with the danger of grain entrapment on farms.
The 70-minute film follows an 18-year-old boy who gets trapped in a grain bin and has to be rescued before he “drowns in corn.”
The tagline of the film is “Feeding the world comes at a cost.”
“There are financial costs, there are anxiety costs, there are mental health costs, and there are safety costs,” Sam Goldberg, the movie’s producer, said at Husker Harvest Days. “We hope to educate around safety and to give people in big cities an appreciation of what it takes for someone to get this done and perform an important duty to the planet.”
Organizations and communities who would like to sponsor a showing of “SILO” can call (855) 600-SILO or email Info@SiloTheFilm.org.
This week is National Farm Safety and Health Week and along with being at Husker Harvest Days to promote the movie, the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (CS-CASH) at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Agri-Safe Network are using the week to raise awareness of the risk of injury and illness for women in agriculture.
In Nebraska and throughout the Midwest, farming is a family operation. In many cases, women and teenage girls do as much work on the farm as men and boys do.
The 2017 U.S. Census estimates that 36% of all producers are female and 56% of all farms have at least one female decision maker. The total went from about 970,000 women in 2012 to about 1.2 million in 2017, a 27% increase.
Ergonomic injuries are key as women have more risks with regard to their size and physical strength. Injuries and strained muscles in the neck, shoulders and back are common. Ergonomic injuries can also occur more readily as women age and bone density, chronic diseases, natural decline in strength and other physical changes occur.
Traditionally, women in leading roles on the farm have not had access to safety training resources customized to suit their unique needs. Also, it’s typical on farms for both women and men to just jump in and do what needs to be done without concern for risks to their health.
AgriSafe is sharing training programs this week to help women on the farm become more aware of what they can do to protect themselves.
Individual and group training also is available through the AgriSafe Network website and can be scheduled for an on-site session. More details on these various training opportunities are available at the https://learning.agrisafe.org website and going to the “Training Catalog” link.
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Lincoln Journal Star. September 20, 2019
Overcrowded, understaffed: Familiar story in state prisons
When Tecumseh was announced in 1998 as the site of a new state prison, a Nebraska Department of Corrections official said, “The day the thing opens, we’ll fill it and still be overcrowded.”
He was spot on. At that time, the state housed roughly 1,100 more inmates than its prisons were designed to hold. Now, that number has risen to more than 2,000.
With Nebraska all but guaranteed to declare a prison overcrowding emergency July 1, 2020, under a 2002 state law, it would have to release 1,100 inmates merely to fall to 140% of its 10 facilities’ designed capacity. This would drop Nebraska to merely the fifth-most-crowded in the U.S.
These anecdotes are a few of the countless interesting notes in the annual report released this week by Inspector General for Corrections Doug Koebernick. The 271-page document delves into the long-simmering crisis within Nebraska prisons, with much of the ink dedicated to the same two problems - too many inmates, too few workers - seen for years.
Changes to stem these tides won’t be easy, but recent news reports only underscore their need.
With an inmate population at 157% of designed capacity at the end of June and a rise in contraband weapons and drugs that prompted two lockdowns this month at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, the combination could potentially be a dangerous one.
Koebernick highlights that, despite its overcrowded Corrections system, Nebraska actually has a lower incarceration rate than neighboring states, ranking 14th-lowest in the country with 283 out of every 100,000 residents in prison. However, existing facilities remain inadequate for the sheer number of offenders being packed into them.
Yet, staffing is stretched so thin that mandatory overtime - the cost of which grew to $15 million last year - continues to grow. A lack of workers within the agency recently led Koebernick to caution state leaders about building a new wing at the penitentiary because the employees it requires just aren’t available. We noted in a recent editorial that “Buildings alone can’t fix prisons.”
To their credit, state officials have recently instituted pay raises and a bonus system - which likely played a role in annual turnover dipping beneath 30% in 2018. Despite this, the number of vacancies within Corrections hit a record high as working conditions remained challenging.
One sentence best summarizes the situation: “While there are some positive steps being taken by the department, the trends for staff overtime, staff vacancies and inmate population are all going in the wrong direction. The state has some serious choices to make regarding how to address these continuing problems and we certainly don’t have the luxury of continuing to proceed down the same path.”
It’s spot on. Despite a smattering of improvements, Nebraska faces a long road ahead - one uncharted by this state - as it aims to fix a Corrections system neglected for much too long.
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