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?
ByHelen Wieffering, Colleen Long and Camille Fassett, Associated Press/Report for America |
Kids are still an afterthought in reforms championed by lawmakers and pushed by police departments. But in case after case, an Associated Press investigation has found that children as young as 6 have been treated harshly — even brutally — by officers of the law. They've been handcuffed, felled by stun guns, taken down and pinned to the ground by officers often far larger than they were. Departments nationwide have few or no guardrails to prevent such incidents.
As California’s juvenile probation caseloads have plummeted and annual costs of incarcerating a single youth skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of dollars, juvenile probation departments, nevertheless, have manage to stave off severe budget cuts and layoffs. But that ride seemingly is ending as counties explore less costly alternatives to incarceration and probation.
ByJim Salter and Claudia Lauer, Associated Press |
Gun violence is killing an increasing number of American children, from toddlers caught in crossfires to teenagers gunned down in turf wars, drug squabbles or for posting the wrong thing on social media. Experts say idleness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic shares the blame with easy access to guns and disputes that too often end with gunfire.
Going on outdoor walks without a mask. Hopping on a Washington, D.C. Metro train without holding my breath. Meeting friends at restaurants and bars … Resuming those and other parts of my pre-pandemic life has been fun. It’s also been scary — and not for reasons related to COVID-19. I’m Asian American, which can make being in public dangerous.
The FBI reported that, in 2020, the number of hate crimes targeting Asian people rose from 158 to 274, a more than 70% increase.
ByMeribah Knight, Nashville Public Radio, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica |
Among cases referred to juvenile court, the statewide average in Tennessee for how often children were locked up was 5%. In Rutherford County, it was 48%. Judge Donna Scott Davenport says children need consequences. “Being detained in our facility is not a picnic at all,” she says on the radio. “It’s not supposed to be. It’s a consequence for an action.”
Michael is one of dozens of people in New Mexico who received what juvenile justice reformists call “de-facto life sentences” — sentences so long they will likely never be released — for crimes committed as minors. He is a vocal supporter of youth sentencing reforms that died in the state legislature earlier this year, part of a national movement to rehabilitate juvenile offenders and make them eligible for parole earlier.
Headquartered in the upper rooms of a church on 124th Street, Living Redemption is one five such hubs that, in 2017, received $45.9 million of $250 million that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office seized from a drug-money laundering European bank. Decade-old Living Redemption got $10.3 million. The windfall expanded the program — even providing providing a paycheck for those mentoring messengers.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation reports that shootings fell by as much as 73% in communities implementing Cure Violence, an international gun violence-prevention model focused on social inequities and relying on input from people most impacted by gun violence.
