Connecticut turnaround of juvenile system sets standard: common area of juvenile facility with bright colors and motivational banner

Connecticut’s turnaround of troubled juvenile system sets a standard, says justice-equity organization

Connecticut has turned its troubled juvenile facilities into what federal officials have cited as exemplary national models. Staffing is up dramatically, in part because directors talked to employees about their worries and took steps to solve them. The strategy helped reduce confrontations and brought the Hartford center national recognition this year from Performance-based Standards, which works to improve juvenile justice outcomes and equity.

Juvenile reform: multiple metal-framed windows of abandoned multi-story building

Opinion: As some detention centers close, reviving “tough-on-crime” is bad policy

Recent surges in homicides and shootings have prompted some who are opposed to juvenile justice reforms to call for a return to tough-on-crime policies. Those approaches did not make the public safer. They did result in needlessly high incarceration rates for young people, particularly for Black and brown youth. Now is not the time to abandon smart-on-crime justice reforms of the last 20 years as part of yet another race to prove who can be the toughest. We should, instead, be doubling down on those smart reforms.

electronic monitoring: Marie Williams (headshot), senior program officer at the Stoneleigh Foundation, smiling woman with necklace, earrings, pink top

A New Strategy for Juvenile Justice Reform: Local Leadership, Incremental Change

We may not get the hoped-for commitment on juvenile justice reform from the federal government. Despite the best efforts of national advocacy groups, the era of large-scale national reform may well be at an end.
But that doesn’t have to mean a halt, or even a slowing of the wave of reform. There are now unprecedented Left-Right-and-Center coalitions at the state and local levels all around the country that agree on the fundamentals.

What Will a Science-hostile President Mean for Justice Reform?

Concern about how the next administration will deal with criminal justice reform is well-justified. But possibly the most troubling clue to the policies of a Trump administration is contained in the attitudes of the president-elect to science.

Analysis: What’s the Matter With Arkansas?

Why so much bad news lately from Arkansas on juvenile justice? A toxic political climate has thwarted progress to date, but momentum is building and signs suggest that meaningful improvement may be on the horizon.

The Secret Behind Youth Justice Reform: Youth

We sometimes skip class, talk back to teachers and experiment with marijuana. I was shocked to learn that in some areas of the United States teens are arrested and detained for these minor offenses.
Juvenile justice reform organizations fail to recognize the power of empathy between kids. There are a lot of us — 41 million — and we can make a difference.

Putting a Face on Reform

In his 1961 farewell address President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people of the dangers inherent in an alliance of the military, arms makers and politicians. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex” The term has since become common parlance, and his warning, while not unheeded, has done little to stop the continuing accumulation of power into a few hands. It’s such an effective description that it has been adopted by people interested in a range of issues. We can see medical, nonprofit, educational and even wedding industrial complexes referred by those opposed to the way things are done in the respective sectors. The comparison I am most familiar with is the prison industrial complex.

Supreme Court Forbids Mandatory Life Sentences Without Parole for Juveniles

UPDATED Tuesday, 9:23 a.m.: WASHINGTON - Advocates for juvenile justice reform applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 5-to-4 ruling yesterday that children under 18 could not be handed life imprisonment sentences without hope of release – even if convicted of murder – without taking into account their age and other extenuating circumstances at the time of the crime. “Held: The Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders,” read the majority opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, which combined the court’s ruling on two cases, Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, sharply disagreeing that such sentences constituted cruel and unusual punishment for what were “heinous” crimes to society. “Put simply, if a 17-year-old is convicted of deliberately murdering an innocent victim, it is not ‘unusual’ for the murderer to receive a mandatory sentence of life without parole,” Roberts wrote. Kagan responded in a footnote to her opinion that she finds it ironic that the dissenters are holding a 14-year-old’s actions to the same standard as a 17-year-old’s, given that the main finding of the majority is that courts must take individual circumstances into account before deciding on a sentence.