Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/category/ideas-and-opinions/page/33/)
A comprehensive job description is a great first step when hiring a data analyst, but what often gets overlooked is the type of person best suited for this role. A data analyst, especially in the landscape of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), might wear several hats that extend their skills outside the technical demands of the job.
Last fall, the Miami Herald exposed alarming abuses within Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice, including guard-sanctioned beatings, excessive use of force and rampant violence. Likewise, in late 2017, reporters at the Dallas Morning News uncovered sexual abuse by staff in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. These discoveries were troublingly reminiscent of California’s Division of Juvenile Justice, which has been mired in scandal for much of its decadeslong history, including a spate of violent incidents, youth suicides and staff misconduct in the early 2000s that resulted in a 12-year consent decree.
Flinching as a gunshot whizzes past your window. Covering your ears when a police car races down your street, sirens blaring. Walking past a drug deal on your block or a beating at your school.
What should be the cost of a terrible mistake? On Nov. 4, 2013, two young people’s lives tragically intersected on a bus in Oakland, Calif. That afternoon, Oakland’s 57 bus carried Richard and Sasha home after school.
On April 11, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum to all federal prosecutors along the southwest border of the United States to “adopt immediately a zero-tolerance policy” in response to illegal border crossings.
As Bill Gates famously said in his book, “The Road Ahead” (1996), “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
Ten years ago I met my wife. We were high school sweethearts. We fell in love fast. Our love was like electricity. We were together every day. Things between us were great. She was the best friend I had always wanted. We stayed together all through high school, graduated together and moved into a home together.
The W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI) strongly rejects the disturbing and dangerous new policy direction of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) that insinuates that public safety is threatened by efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities (RED).
Black girls are arrested at a rate 30 times that of both white girls and boys. They are also most often pushed into the deepest end of the system — comprising 97 percent of girls newly committed to the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services — even though they pose no threat to public safety. Black girls’ high rates of justice involvement in D.C. is consistent with national research that black girls are the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system.
“See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn!” —Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” 1852
People do not belong in cages. Youth do not belong in cages. Children do not belong in cages. Babies do not belong in cages.