Most juveniles tried in adult courts have generally not been charged with major offenses, and they are rarely imprisoned if found guilty, according to a recent study commissioned by the Justice Department.
More than 40 percent of the juveniles investigated in the study had been charged with property crimes, and another 23 on charges of public disorder or other minor offenses.
In contrast, only 23 percent of the youthful offenders were charged with violent crimes, according to the study conducted by the Ohio-based Academy for Contemporary Problems for the Justice Department’s office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention.
The study, entitled Youth in Adult Courts: Between Two Worlds, examined more than 3,400 criminal cases involving juveniles from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The average offender investigated in the study was white, male, and 17 years old. Just about 50 percent of the juveniles found guilty received either fines or probation as their sentence rather than a term in jail or a corrections facility for teen-agers.
The Education Department’s inspector general has questioned or recommended for recovery more than $160 million in federal funds that allegedly were misspent by states, school districts, and other recipients of the department’s funds.
In its semi-annual report to the Congress, the auditing office also said it had recovered $5.6 million in misspent federal funds that had been identified in previous audits.
The document, which covers the period from last April through September, includes a recommendation that the state of California repay the department $24.8 million in migrant-education funds that were allegedly spent inappropriately.
It also reports that audits of the use of federal funds in Wheeler County, Ga., resulted in a federal grand-jury indictment of five defendants--including a school superintendent and principal--on vote buying, election fraud, and misapplication of federal funds.
Richard A. Campbell, a market-ing instructor at Gateway Technical Institute in Elkhorn, Wis., has been named the National Vocational Teacher of the Year by the American Vocational Association.
His selection, which was announced last week during the ava’s annual convention in St. Louis, was made from among five regional semi-finalists.
Mr. Campbell has been with the institute since 1976. He teaches classroom courses, as well as teaching three marketing courses over the radio for about 100 students.
Between 1970 and 1973, he worked at the Atlanta Area Technical School in Georgia. He began his career as a salesman.
The other regional winners were: Region I, Peter D. Wolcott, Glastonbury High School, Conn.; Region II, Ferrell McDade Bridwell Jr., Greer High School, South Carolina; Region IV, D. Dwight Snider, Tri-County Area Vocational-Technical School, Bartlesville, Okla.; Region V, Byron Memmott, Lehi High School, Utah.
