Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/30/)
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?
Let me start by saying I am a triracial human being with a dark complexion. That was my funny way of saying I’m Black. I embrace my Mexican side. I embrace my Indian side and my Black side but for a while no one else embraced it.
I was bullied a lot growing up. I’m 33 years young, and it was because I didn’t fit the mold the world created for me.
VIDEOGRAPHER: JACOB LANGSTON
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Teri Sopp’s former self stares down from a wall in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office. The painting, a gift more than a dozen years ago, bears silent witness as she works to free people also frozen in time, serving lifelong sentences for crimes committed before they turned 18. For one client, she’s arguing reduced culpability because of lead. She expects to argue the same for other clients. Sopp is the director of the resentencing project for juveniles serving life without parole.
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — In the decades after the civil rights era, Black communities in Jacksonville remained disproportionately impoverished, blighted and policed. Some activists would say this continues to present day. This was the world in which John grew up. Born in the 1970s, John’s childhood was characterized by instability, neglect and abuse. John (a pseudonym) had lived in two dozen homes by the time he moved out.
An often overlooked but major injustice is how our juvenile justice system impacts Black and Hispanic youth and their families, limiting their ability to reach their full potential and thrive in their communities. In fact, the disparities are so bad that a recent Marshall Project article noted that “though the racial inequality in youth detention has long been stark, it's wider than ever.”
Youth arrest rates have plummeted over the past several decades, falling nearly 70% nationwide since 2000, including a 54% reduction in violent offense arrests. There are now fewer youth in juvenile halls or courtrooms and far smaller probation caseloads. Yet state and local governments continue to invest heavily in juvenile justice, shoring up systems that are known to cause harm.
Amid the current economic crisis, maintaining overbuilt juvenile facilities and bloated probation budgets squanders resources that schools, health systems and community-based service providers desperately need. Moreover, funding excessive facility space can needlessly sweep youth into a system bent on self-preservation. In California, like much of the country, juvenile justice systems have experienced significant population reductions.
The well-established finding that a majority of youth in the juvenile justice system have been exposed to trauma has led to a clarion call for the implementation of trauma-informed practices.
However, to date, less attention has been paid to the importance of providing juvenile justice staff with the tools needed to carry out trauma-informed practices in ways that protect them from the potential risks associated with this work. In fact, recognition of such risks is relatively new; only in 2013 did the official diagnosis of post-traumatic stress first recognize that secondary exposure to another person’s trauma is a bona fide type of traumatic experience. Such secondary traumatic stress (STS) — also termed vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue — has mostly been the focus of attention among mental health professionals and first responders.
But well known in the juvenile justice community — even if not well recognized outside of it — is that working with traumatized youth and families, reading their extensive trauma histories, performing trauma screenings and delivering trauma-informed programming all bring us into contact with thoughts, feelings and images that can be difficult to put aside at the end of the day. What can be done? Self-care: strengths and limitations
To date, most of the strategies designed to prevent or intervene with STS have been focused on self-care and wellness promotion, which are certainly of value.
There are thousands of years’ worth of documented history and stories of our connection with each other. There are millions of love stories and historical accounts of all kinds of relationships interpreted in books, movies and even sketched onto buildings and structures that speaks to our powerful bond.
Could this be the answer to the age-old question — what is the purpose of life? Science tells us it is. We are programmed to connect, not to self-destruct. If this is so, then why is it that we are suffering through a suicide crisis?
A crisis is when a non-common negative occurrence increases in trend and frequency.
NEW YORK — K’Juan Lanclos was playing basketball in a park near the Butler Community Center in the Bronx when his friends suddenly fled. Looking up, the then-13-year-old saw a wall of cops running straight at him. Not knowing what else to do, he ran too.