Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/233/)
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?
The more we can engage judges in the work of juvenile justice councils, the more likely we will be to involve the entire community. State systems can make better laws and policies and provide funding and resources, but it takes community members to change attitudes and practices that impact individual lives.
Gang activity continues to course through the Internet, to the point where Rogers Park Police Cmdr. Thomas Waldera called the online interactions “technological kerosene.”
There is little doubt to most of America just how distasteful police in America find it when citizens question their actions. Yet it’s amazing just how little accountability there is for the people who are tasked with holding the rest of us accountable for our actions.
George Toca, sentenced as a teen to life without parole in 1985 has been released from a Louisiana prison after Orleans Parish prosecutors allowed him to enter an Alford plea, leading to the vacation of his previous sentence. Toca’s case has been at the center of the ongoing legal battle to determine the retroactivity of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Miller vs. Alabama. According to SCOTUS Blog Toca’s case had been scheduled to be heard by the court this year and would have addressed retroactivity at least in Toca’s case. “Over the past year, the Court has several times turned down the same plea that it agreed to hear in Toca’s case.
Recently Tony, 50, April, 40, and their two children, Austin Ramsey, 16, and Sara Ramsey, 12, spoke to the JJIE about their past struggles and how ultimately the Pickens County Drug Court played a major role in bringing the family together and setting them on the road to a new life.
Nine years ago I never dreamed that my career would become so focused on young offenders and that I would be working as the project director of the newly created National Juvenile Justice Prosecution Center at Georgetown University.
Research also consistently finds that state-funded youth corrections facilities are dangerous, unnecessary, obsolete and inadequate for the serious mental health, educational and social service needs faced by many court-involved youth.
A broad study of reforms in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department “puts a nail in the coffin” of the strategy of youth prisons as a public safety option, said the director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which funded the report.