Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/299/)
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?
Say you've just been assigned to do a story on a 15-year-old kid in trouble with the law. She's got drug problems, she may have mental health issues -- is her story unusual? If her probation officer tells you the girl has been sent to treatment, but it "didn't work," how do you know what questions to ask next? Get the answers and more in an upcoming webinar!
Funds for mental health budgets were slashed a combined $4 billion from 2008 to 2012. In the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December experts have watched that trend sharply reverse.
The process of destroying Sandy Hook Elementary School -- where last year Adam Lanza massacred 20 first-grade students and six teachers and staff -- began earlier in the year and is now nearly complete.
It comes as a shock to realize that children in the United States have significantly fewer legal protections than children in other nations.
One of the most entrenched ideas in American culture is that punishment is effective both at creating justice and at affecting change in those who do wrong. The basic concept is that when someone does something I don’t like I hurt them, or threaten to hurt them, and they change. Obviously this kind of violence does work, but it is limited by my ability and willingness to harm you. We see this idea demonstrated in everything from child rearing to war. We also see it played out in the realm of juvenile justice policy.
To provide insight into the shadowy world of juvenile public defense, JJIE spent a day trailing juvenile public defender Pinkney at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, atop a hill in this city in the East Bay, just south of Oakland.
They’re known as status offenders – youths who commit offenses that wouldn’t even be considered offenses but for their age: truancy, running away from home, curfew violations, alcohol or tobacco possession.
If minority students face harsher punishments than white students for the same school infractions in many schools, as plenty of studies say they do, there are also people who want to change that, and the struggle is happening in courts, in state legislatures, in classrooms and at school board meetings.