Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/231/)
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?
Something “is outta kilter” or smells to “high heaven,” so bad it would “knock a buzzard off a gut wagon.” It looks like Mr. Listenbee does have a serious problem at OJJDP — employees who don’t know “crap from apple butter.” Why do these union employees not see what the advocates and experts see?
African-American youth overwhelmingly receive harsher treatment than white youth in the system at most stages of case processing. African-American youth make up an astounding 30 percent of those arrested while they only represent 17 percent of the overall youth population.
WASHINGTON — Long-overdue reauthorization of the landmark Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act will be the focus today for a federal committee that advises the Obama administration and congressional lawmakers on juvenile justice matters.
We must stop kicking black and brown children out of school and arresting them. This is a national crisis but it is not treated as such. We spend more time thinking about how we are going to treat or change these young people once they’ve been kicked out of school and arrested rather than looking at pathological social conditions and policies, or at the disease of white supremacy.
ATLANTA — Three Georgia teens have created an Android app called Five-O to document police abuse of authority that has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
More than 1 million youths in America are gang members — more than triple the number estimated by law enforcement, according to a new study that shatters some long-held beliefs about gangs.
The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, refutes the notions that gang members are overwhelmingly black or Latino males and that once youths join a gang, they cannot leave.
Lead author David Pyrooz, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, said gang members come from all backgrounds. The study found about 40 percent are non-Hispanic white, Pyrooz said, with the remainder disproportionately black and Latino.
A new cover story in The Christian Science Monitor explores how communities around the nation are exploring alternatives to incarceration for children caught up in the juvenile justice system. To further the conversation on this issue they will be hosting a conversation on Facebook today at noon EST.
What we seldom discuss is the white elephant in the room called the politics of fear that the appearance of being soft will cost me my job; or worse, that one of those kids pulled from the deep end goes on to seriously hurt or kill someone.