Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/category/ideas-and-opinions/page/40/)
I recently read an Associated Press interview with singer and actress Mary J. Blige in which she shared her personal account of sexual harassment, beginning at age 5. “From age 5 to 17, I [went] through hell with sexual harassment … By the time I got to the music business, it was like, ‘Don't touch me or I'll kill you,’” she said.
Restrictive therapeutic facilities — inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, group homes and juvenile detention facilities — serve the most challenging youth in society. Before admission, these children and adolescents have often been on the receiving end of countless detentions, suspensions, expulsions, restraints, seclusions and corporal punishment. Many have significant trauma histories.
Tuesday is President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address. As he prepares to address the nation and outline his priorities for the year, we thought it fruitful to write our own State of Youth Justice address.
California is in the process of revising standards for the state’s local juvenile justice facilities, which confine and detain thousands of young people every year. These standards should protect young people from the rampant abuse, trauma and violence that occur within these facilities.
Several years ago I was running a reentry project in south Brooklyn supporting formerly incarcerated people returning to their communities. We were able to raise some funds to create a leadership development workshop.
In cities across the country we've seen regressive youth justice and education policies that are supported — and even driven by — media narratives that...
Would a law enforcement officer hand a private citizen a gun and ask them to uphold the law without the completion of an officer’s standards and training course? The answer is a resounding no, because that would put people's lives in jeopardy.
It is a natural human emotion to be scared of what we don’t understand. And sometimes the fear is too great and we check our brains at the door.
The scars of my childhood are the very parts of me that so many men like me, incarcerated men...
Fifty years ago, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life was tragically taken in Memphis, Tennessee.