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Richard Ross, Every Seven Seconds a Photo of Isolation

Photographer Richard Ross knows the juvenile justice system well. For his “Juvenile In Justice” project, he scoured the United States, interviewing thousands of detained young people in hundreds of facilities across the nation.

OP-ED: When Kids Behave Like Kids, Don’t Punish Them Like They are Adults

Tamar Birckhead new

As a criminal defense lawyer and the mother of two girls, I have a very effective disciplinary tool at my disposal: I can take just about any undesirable interaction between my daughters and frame it as a crime.  If the older one smacks the younger one, it’s an assault. If the younger one takes her big sister’s earrings, it’s larceny. If they are both yelling and shouting at each other, it’s disorderly conduct. Over the years, I’ve been able to advise them that this behavior not only breaks the rules of our home but also violates North Carolina’s criminal statutes. As someone who defends children in juvenile delinquency court, I can also warn them that they could be criminally prosecuted and end up – as my young clients do – facing a judge and the possibility of a year of supervised probation, removal from their home, or long-term detention and commitment. Continue Reading →

New Report Reveals Sexual Victimization Rates in U.S. Juvenile Facilities

juvenile-criminals

The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a new report detailing rates of sexual victimization in the nation’s juvenile facilities. The report, incorporating data from the 2012 National Survey of Youth in Custody, found that nearly one in 10 young people in state-operated or state-contracted juvenile facilities reported at least one sexual victimization incident last year. Continue Reading →

OP-ED: Extending Justice to All Kids

John Lash

Humans naturally form groups, and the way we treat those inside our groups is different, usually radically so, from the way we treat outsiders. One cause of this is  moral exclusion, “excluding other individuals or groups from one’s own moral community; i.e. viewing others as lying beyond the boundary within which moral values and rules of justice and fairness apply.”
Those within our group are part of our “scope of justice.” Those outside are treated to varying degrees of fairness. This is why people in churches, normally peaceful places, cheered when Osama Bin Laden was killed. This is why Americans in general are horrified by Newtown and indifferent to children who are casualties of drone strikes in Pakistan. One of the most glaring examples of moral exclusion and the limited scope of justice in the United States occurs in youth detention. Continue Reading →