Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (http://jjie.org/author/msmith/)
In the nearly four years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided that juveniles can’t be subject to mandatory life-without-parole sentences, hundreds of juvenile offenders have been given a chance at eventual release.
NEWNAN, Ga. — It was the fake $100 bill that finally landed Corey Roberts in prison.
He’d already had one close call, getting picked up for marijuana possession at the end of his freshman year in college.
Semaj Clark is a determined young man.
The Los Angeles teenager’s steadfastness helped him emerge from a childhood punctuated by a string of foster homes and arrests to become an ambassador to troubled youth.
Behind the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s renewed push to close large, secure facilities it’s dubbed “youth prisons” lies what it calls a failure of earlier reforms that had once seemed hopeful.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is throwing new weight into its campaign to close state juvenile correctional centers nationwide, saying they’ve effectively become “youth prisons” where teens are prone to being abused.