Vera Study Looks At Mandatory Sentencing Reforms

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Over the last decade, the majority of states have taken steps to reform or limit mandatory sentencing laws, signaling a shift in a decades-long approach to combatting crime, according to a report recently released by the Vera Institute of Justice. Starting in the 1970s, mandatory sentences were introduced to tackle crime, especially in drug-related offenses. In 1973, New York enacted a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years to life for the possession of a hard drug. As other states adopted similar laws, courts were required to use fixed sentences for certain crimes instead of allowing cases to be evaluated on an individual basis. The report, however, shows that states have been changing those laws, especially in recent years.

John Lash

One Boy’s Story of Solitary Confinement

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For James Burns solitary confinement began when he was six years old. As he writes in a recent ACLU article, “They restrained me, they yanked down my pants, and they gave me a shot. It knocked me out."

Closure at Corsicana: History Lessons From a Shuttered Texas Juvenile Lock-Up

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Since it's founding in 1887, one Texas juvenile residential facility’s history has followed broader trends in juvenile issues. As the nation turned to incarceration, the facility grew, only to shrink as the country turned back to community programs. The abuses found at Corsicana could be found in many other places across the United States. But so could the positive stories, as agencies clambered to respond to federal scrutiny. As the country changed, and its approach to juvenile justice changed, so did Corsicana, mirroring the country's treatment of its youngest and most vulnerable population.

OP-ED: Why Juvenile Justice Advocates Shouldn’t Ignore Retribution

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In juvenile justice advocacy, we don’t like to talk about retribution, the principle that people who break the law deserve to be punished in proportion to their offenses. This is for a good reason. It is not just the fact that it is cruel for the state to hurt kids, even if it is sanctioned by some theory of moral desert. At its core, the juvenile justice system rejects the primacy of this idea. The founding premise of the juvenile justice system is not to define kids by their past actions and punish them as if they were adults, but to look toward their possible future and how they can develop beyond the worst thing they have done.

OP-ED: Zero Tolerance Makes Zero Sense

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The Obama administration officially acknowledged recently what many others have been saying for years. It’s not in students’ or the community’s best interest to have a zero-tolerance school policy that gets youths thrown into the criminal system. As U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder put it, “A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct.”
The goal of how we handle delinquent teens needs to be keeping them out of the juvenile justice system where they are more likely to learn new ways to commit crimes and get into worse trouble. A finding in a study of 1 million Texas students is particularly eye opening. Sixty percent of middle and high school students were suspended or expelled at least once.

White Paper: Need to Reform Mental Health Treatment for Incarcerated Youth

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CHICAGO — National mental health organizations and experts are calling for reforming mental health services for incarcerated youth after recent reports revealed startlingly high numbers of mental health disorder in the population. Up to 70 percent of youths who come in contact with the juvenile justice system have a diagnosable mental health disorder, according to a Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Collaborative for Change white paper published Thursday. On average, up to 600,000 youths are in detention centers and 70,000 youths are in correctional facilities every day. Many of those youths are in detention for committing minor, non-violent offenses, according to the white paper. But once inside detention and facilities, youth do not receive proper treatment for mental health disorders.