Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/246/)
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?
Page May had only one word for it: torture. That was how she and others with the new activist group We Charge Genocide are classifying police brutality in Chicago in a report compiled for the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the findings of which were presented this week before a crowded room of activists at the Jane Adams Hull House.
In a sobering decision, the Illinois Supreme Court recently upheld the automatic adult prosecution of a 15-year-old who was living in a state residential home due to long-standing neglect by his family.
They could have been locked up for offenses ranging from theft to assault to armed robbery.
Instead, they planted vegetables at an urban farm, painted a mural to honor a community activist, staged a youth talent show, organized “safe parties” for teens at a local community center – away from the gunfire and stabbings outside.
Counselors refer some Los Angeles students to JROTC in an effort to improve their grades and attitudes.
This week in juvenile justice: "If you lock people up and don’t teach them something, it’s a lose/lose situation." — "There were things going on at Rikers that were pretty horrific, and one of them was the conditions in the adolescent jail." — Collateral consequence laws do not provide definitive results. And more ...
Because we work from the desire to create more just and less alienating ways of interacting, we often find ourselves worrying about our overall impact in complex situations. Above all we wish to avoid doing further harm, but that isn’t always easy to determine.
Even when adult or juvenile inmates are freed, many remain shackled by laws that make it difficult for them to get welfare, vote, obtain a drivers license and find stable housing and employment. These laws are called collateral consequence laws — formal restrictions on a person following their conviction.
Juvenile justice policy at the federal level is in a state of uncertainty right now.