Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/category/ideas-and-opinions/page/15/)
Sarah is a mother living in Madison, Wis., whose son was involved in juvenile court for breaking a window at his school. Now, she’s struggling to pay bills for court fines and fees (which we refer to as legal financial obligations, or LFOs) that just keep on coming in the mail.
I am an inmate at Liberty Correctional in Bristol, Fla. I am going on my 12th year of a 40-year-sentence for a nonviolent, first-time offense I committed 60 days into my 17th birthday.
On a sunny afternoon in 2006, I was driving my four sons to a cookout in Newark, N.J., my hometown.
We had stopped at an intersection when a group of teenagers spilled into the street behind us. They were beating another young man, and it wasn’t a game. My sons started yelling, asking what was happening.
From training to practicing to now teaching, one of the key factors in psychotherapy that continually surfaces is countertransference (sorry self-care), which we know as the phenomenon of the clinician reaction to the client. I prefer to think of countertransference as our “entanglement” with the client — it is never neat and organized. And I think a lot of managing entanglement starts with recognizing that fundamentally, clinicians are entangled with themselves and the stories we create for ourselves. So this is a story about the story about my entanglements.
Imagine: You are 15 years old. Your mother, deep in drug debt, sends you to give a strange man $10. But somehow you know he expects more — your body. The world judges you as reckless, promiscuous, and inconsiderate of others.
—Kenjdra, in state custody
“Youth matters” in determining a juvenile’s sentence declared Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. This comment was offered during oral arguments for Mathena v. Malvo, a statement that seven of the nine justices appeared to agree with.
At the moment, the only experience that seems harder than serving seven years in prison is being free. Yes, you read that correctly. Make no mistake, “gratitude” doesn’t even begin to describe how it feels to be home, reunited with my family. I can finally eat, sleep and bathe when I want.
Five years ago, I was an ordinary mom and like most people I knew nothing about the criminal justice system and quite honestly, like most, I didn’t care. It didn’t affect me.
As the juvenile justice system has evolved, the use of statistics and data to inform decision-making have become commonplace. Risk assessment in...
Let’s examine this assertion using Johnny as a case study. He is 15 years old and before the juvenile court for battery on a teacher, affray, disrupting public...