Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/youth-welfare/)
Will Keeps was a 15-year-old member of a Chicago gang when he witnessed rival members kill his friend. He escaped the streets and moved to Iowa to help other young people from troubled backgrounds. Now, Keeps is hospitalized and in serious condition following just the sort of violence he has devoted his life to stopping: a shooting that killed two teenagers at the Starts Right Here education program he founded in Des Moines.
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.
Gun violence is killing an increasing number of American children, from toddlers caught in crossfires to teenagers gunned down in turf wars, drug squabbles or for posting the wrong thing on social media. Experts say idleness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic shares the blame with easy access to guns and disputes that too often end with gunfire.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog says the Trump administration, under its practice of separating families at the border, forced migrant parents to leave the U.S. without their children, contradicting claims by officials that parents were willingly leaving them behind.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina legislators are pushing to replace the director of the state’s embattled juvenile prisons, who stumbled through more than three hours of questioning last week.
Better data collection, improved efforts to attract juvenile defenders and well-funded, well-organized defense systems are among the ways to ensure youth charged with an offense have a lawyer by their side when they enter a courtroom, a new report says.
James Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, sent a letter Wednesday to CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC News’ Martha Raddatz imploring the moderators to place more emphasis on kids in their questions during the next presidential debate this Sunday.
Very few things mattered to me, including my own life. It was not until I joined the college program of the juvenile detention facility that I was placed at that I realized the important role that education could play in helping young men like myself and others turn their life around.
There’s good news and bad news in the report “Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2015,” the most recent in an annual series produced jointly by the U.S. departments of education (ED) and justice (DOJ). Just as important, there’s help available to sustain the good news and tackle the bad.
Children with an incarcerated parent often suffer emotionally, academically and financially, and too few policies consider their needs, says a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.