Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/author/ryan-schill/page/4/)
Merelyn Bucio is a young photographer working with NYC Salt, a non-profit photography program for inner-city teenagers in New York City. NYC Salt's mission is to engage, inspire, and empower NYC teens by providing them with professional-grade visual communication skills. Today Merelyn's photographs, which uniquely capture the city she calls home, are featured on Bokeh.
Last month, Richard Ross, the creator of Juvenile In Justice, visited and photographed two juvenile detention facilities in Olathe, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City. This week the photos are featured on Bokeh, JJIE's multimedia site. Through the lens of architecture, the photographs investigate changes and reforms in the state's detention practices. The two facilities, one old and one new, are situated across from one another. The new facility, the Johnson County Youth and Family Services Center, is an airy LEED-certified building. Ross describes the older facility, Johnson County Juvenile Detention Center, as having architecture reminiscent of TV movies dealing with punishment.
In this two-part package, The Chicago Bureau takes a look at the newly reintroduced legislation, analyzing both its prospects for Congressional passage this time around and the concerns raised by some juvenile justice experts, who say that the violence prevention and intervention strategies favored by the Youth PROMISE Act will be of limited effectiveness.
Could the Youth PROMISE Act result in the over-policing of black and Latino communities?
If it's possible for a public policy research topic to be "in vogue," juvenile justice has been a craze for the past decade. Bookshelves and flash drives have been filled with statistics and studies of crimes by kids and against kids and what approaches are best at preventing and responding to both. The evidence-based practices evolving from this research have helped reduce crime and the number of incarcerated children in America. The bumper crop of research is due in large part to the confluence of tight state budgets and the commitment of the MacArthur Foundation and several other foundations, which have insisted on the collection of data and analysis -- the evidence of best practices. [Editor’s note: The MacArthur Foundation is a funder of the JJIE.] The latest harvest in that bumper crop has grabbed the attention of policy wonks and could result in even more use of preventative practices that keep kids out of prison cells and deliver successful and less expensive responses at the community level.
Over the past three decades, adolescent development scholars, criminologists and mental health practitioners have achieved a breakthrough – or rather two breakthroughs. They have developed two different approaches to the care and supervision of troubled and delinquent children that consistently work better and cost less than correctional confinement and other commonplace services. One approach, which involves intensive and highly-regimented family therapy delivered to young people in their own homes, has been rigorously tested in scientific evaluations and repeatedly yielded substantial and statistically significant reductions in recidivism and treatment/confinement costs. The second – known as wraparound – targets youth with serious emotional disturbances, and it assembles a team of caring adults to devise an appropriate mix of community-based services in lieu of placing the child into a residential facility. Numerous studies show that wraparound, too, improves behavioral health and reduces involvement in the justice system – and does so at a fraction of the cost of confinement or residential treatment.
The Vera Institute has released a guide to help organizations interested in creating or strengthening a research base for their work. Although written primarily for juvenile justice initiatives, the guide may be helpful for other youth-serving programs as well.
Illinois is ranked 23rd overall for child well-being in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2013 KIDS COUNT Data Book.
The shooting at Sandy Hook may unintentionally result in policies that exacerbate the “school-to-prison-pipeline."
Griselda, 17, was arrested when she was 14. In this audio piece she talks about bad influences in her neighborhood, and how exalt helped her get her life back on track.