Detention diversion: two young women in orange t-shirts and dark pants stand in front of a wall with several posters and notices

A New York City detention-diversion project is reserved for girls and queer youth

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Since Just Us launched in January, 25 youth have enrolled in a three-year pilot project that pays girls and queer youth involved in the criminal justice system, or who are at-risk for winding up there, to participate in projects aimed at keeping them out of detention facilities.

Run by New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services and created by a Vera Institute of Justice task force, JustUs provides individual and group counseling; legal advocacy; employment workshops; and internships for Brooklyn youth. The program serves females who are lesbian, bisexual and straight and youth who are non-binary, trans or queer.

“A lot of times, people are looking for support and they want to be heard and seen,” said Helianis Quijada Salazar, director of JustUs. “We try to customize everything to meet the unique needs of a person.”

In Florida’s murder capitol, gun suicides are overshadowed by gun homicides

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It had been scarcely a year since his son was discharged from the Navy following a suicide attempt, Ramon Day said, and only a few months since he’d voluntarily undergone in-patient care at Mental Health Resource Center in Jacksonville, Fla. So, when then 25-year-old Tyler Day returned from a Department of Veterans Affairs counseling appointment and offhandedly mentioned that he’d bought a gun, his father was stunned.

“You having a gun upsets me a great deal,” Ramon Day said, recalling his fright over his son’s revelation back in the summer of 2011. “If you would do me a personal favor, return the gun.”

Analysis on racial disparities in youth detention: Upset boy leaning on fence, youth separated from family and detained

Analysis: Racial disparities in juvenile detention narrowed overall, but widened in some states

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Black youth were more than four times as likely as white ones to be detained or committed to a juvenile facility, according to a report released this month by The Sentencing Project, which also noted that the Black-white disparity in detention and incarceration declined since it last analyzed the data. The newest report is based on the 36,479 youth in a total of 1,510 detention centers, youth prisons, residential treatment centers and youth homes as of October 2019; the prior analysis was conducted in 2015.

316 people are shot every day in America. Here are 5 stories

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They panic if a balloon pops. They hold dying family members. They push their wounded bodies to heal and scroll longingly through photos and videos of their lost loved ones. Behind the statistics and the political blame game over rising gun violence are the victims. The spike plaguing many American cities this year has lawmakers reeling and police scrambling, though homicide rates are not rising as high as the double-digit jumps seen in 2020. Still, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 316 people are shot every day in the U.S. and 106 of them die.

Nonprofits push parole reform and housing for parolees

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Since being released from New York City’s Rikers Island jail — where he’d been sentenced to four months for not being where his parole officer expected him to be on a certain day and time — Dakem Roberts has been living in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. 

It was his latest incarceration since, in the late 1970s, when he was 16, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He’d been arrested for his involvement in a robbery whose victim died the next day of heart failure, he said.  

NY juvenile crime law: Green Double door entry to brick building with "Juvenile Division" sign above doors

Homicide likely to be only crime charged to New Yorkers under 12

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Unless accused of criminally negligent homicide, no child younger than 12 could be legally arrested, detained or brought before a judge, according to legislation New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears poised to sign. Approved by the state’s legislature, the bill undoes a 1909 law allowing the arrests of kids as young as 7.

NYC parade honors essential youth workers

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During the rollercoaster ride of a pandemic, it was Maxene Foster’s job to help make sure that cash-strapped Bronx residents got fed, were safely sheltered and so forth. For those efforts, the 20-year employee of Bronxworks, was tapped to represent the 900 staffers of that nonprofit agency during that rarest of Big Apple events: a ticker-tape parade. The ticker-tape, New York City parade celebrated youth probation officers, along with workers from nonprofit agencies, transit and other institutions deemed essential workplaces during the pandemic.

NY marijuana laws: Two hand-rolled marijuana joints rest on lid and glass jar lying on its side with marijuana buds in it.

Legalizing recreational marijuana likely means fewer arrests of juveniles of color

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The new law is retroactive. It allows persons to have prior marijuana-related convictions for which, under the new rules, they would not be arrested, to be expunged from their record. Expungement of prior records was critical to ensuring fairer justice for communities disproportionately policed, arrested and affected by drug policies, said New York State Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes (D-Buffalo). “Black communities, brown communities, have always been the target of these laws,” Peoples-Stokes said. “If we’re going to take the market above ground, we have to remove those convictions.”

South Carolina juvenile detention reform: Woman with long light brown hair wearing black and white striped top holding papers up with her right hand stands behind a wood and brass podium speaking into a microphone.

Parents and corrections officers fault South Carolina juvenile facilities before state senate

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Though technically it was against the rules, a juvenile corrections officer had been watching and chuckling along as a group of girl detainees enjoyed riding a foam mattress down a flight of stairs at a Union, S.C. detention facility in November 2020. Declaring the scene a riot, the supervising officer ordered his underlings to search the girls. In front of male officers the girls were forced to strip down to their bras and panties.