In late September, Torri was driving down the highway with her 11-year-old son Junior in the back seat when her phone started ringing.
It was the Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputy who worked at Junior’s middle school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Deputy Arthur Richardson asked Torri where she was. She told him she was on the way to a family birthday dinner at LongHorn Steakhouse.
“He said, ‘Is Junior with you?’” Torri recalled.
Earlier that day, Junior had been accused by other students of making a threat against the school. When Torri had come to pick him up, she’d spoken with Richardson and with administrators, who’d told her he was allowed to return to class the next day. The principal had said she would carry out an investigation then. ProPublica and WPLN are using a nickname for Junior and not including Torri’s last name at the family’s request, to prevent him from being identifiable.
When Richardson called her in the car, Torri immediately felt uneasy. He didn’t say much before hanging up, and she thought about turning around to go home. But she kept driving. When they walked into the restaurant, Torri watched as Junior happily greeted his family.
Soon her phone rang again. It was the deputy. He said he was outside in the strip mall’s parking lot and needed to talk to Junior. Torri called Junior’s stepdad, Kevin Boyer, for extra support, putting him on speaker as she went outside to talk to Richardson. She left Junior with the family, wanting to protect her son for as long as she could ...
TUCSON, Arizona — Adriana Grijalva was getting ready to head to class at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2022 when she got a text message from her cousin telling her to stay put. The cousin, who works in maintenance at the university, had watched law enforcement descend on campus and reached out to make sure she was safe. A former student had just shot a professor 11 times, killing him.
Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) announced October 8 that it will partner with four new communities to build new restorative youth justice diversion programs. Restorative justice includes an accountability process that identifies root causes of youth criminal actions, while providing an opportunity for healing both for the person harmed and the person who has caused harm.
Louisiana is the only state to pass and then reverse Raise the Age legislation. Louisiana’s criminal justice system now treats all 17-year-olds as adults. Is reversing Raise the Age making a difference in the number of violent crimes by 18-year-olds?
Non-felony offenses accounted for two out of three arrests of juvenile girls in Florida, according to “The Justice for Girls Blueprint: The Way Forward for Florida,” recently released by the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center.
Two-thirds of the state's justice-involved girls but roughly one-third of boys — 66% versus 38% — were arrested for felony offenses. Two-thirds of girls and almost one-fifth of boys were incarcerated for non-felonies, according to the center's analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Dashboard, Department of Health Youth Substance Abuse Survey and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey...
West Charlotte High School had let out only minutes earlier when, hearing gunfire, school officials ordered an immediate lockdown and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers swarmed the campus. That incident, the week before Christmas break 2021, was the ninth time a gun had been found at one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s most troubled public schools since the start of the school year.
Ghost guns — so-called because they are nearly impossible to trace — are sold in parts and assembled by the buyer. Until recently, they were not classified as firearms, meaning there were no background checks and dealers didn’t have to be federally-licensed.
That has opened the door for traffickers, teens and people with felony records to get ghost guns.
Most of the 50 states have clearly designated which agencies are in charge of hiring teachers for incarcerated juveniles, creating teaching curriculum and other education services. But how and by whom that instruction gets delivered varies substantially from state to state and locale to locale, resulting in a fragmented system that generally provides inferior instruction, according to a recent report from Bellwether Education Partners.
Few among us are oblivious to the suffering that results from certain crimes committed by youthful offenders. As researchers and citizens, we agree that those who harm another person must be held accountable. However, the immaturity of a young person must be considered in meting out an appropriate punishment.
A person's brain must be fully developed before it can be discerned whether that individual will continue to offend or was just a child who make a horrible mistake.
Tailor-made services are important for many justice-involved LGBTQ youth and young adults their advocates contend, because those individuals’ encounters with law enforcement, courts, correctional and other agencies often are in stark contrast to how their heterosexual peers navigate the justice system and society in general.
A significant shift away from the "get tough" philosophy of the 1980s and '90s for youth offenders, has resulted in far fewer children being prosecuted in U.S. adult courts. That has meant second chances for untold thousands of youths.
