Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/337/)
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?
Although discussion of trafficked youth has become prevalent in mainstream media and other venues, protection from prosecution for prostitution of domestic minors still remains elusive.
A Children’s Law Center report released last week finds that young people in Washington, D.C. are not receiving speedy assistance from the District’s mental health services.
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They're usually associated with Bob Marley and the island culture of Trinidad and Tobago, but the calypso sounds emanating from a classroom at The Hamilton-Madison House are made by Asian hands. Hamilton-Madison is nestled within the Gov. Alfred E. Smith Houses in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Manhattan. For more than six years, the House ran a music school offering affordable private violin and piano lessons to the residents of the community. For those years, the Asian community overwhelmingly used the music school. Hoping to reach more black and Latino budding-musicians -- who make up almost 56 percent of the community -- the executive director suggested introducing a steel pan class.
Since 2009, the number of juvenile court referrals in Bell County, Texas has plummeted from 1,365 to 857 -- a decrease of almost 40 percent over the last four years. During the same timeframe, the county -- home to more than 300,000 people -- has seen its juvenile felony cases decrease by a quarter, falling from 202 in 2009 to just 153 in 2012. According to Judge Ed Johnson, a juvenile court judge in the central Texas county for more than a quarter century, family relationships and how communities respond to young people displaying delinquent behavior is pivotal in the rehabilitation process of young offenders. “In the last 20 years, they have also realized that soldiers with better family lives are better soldiers, and so they have also implemented a lot of family-based programs to provide support for these young families and their children,” he told KWTX-TV. Juvenile suspension officer Chris Dart said that the children at the Bell County Juvenile Education Center in Harker Heights typically come from troubled homes and have experienced severe abuse prior to becoming involved with the juvenile justice system.
Enrolling young people in school-based, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) programs may lead to fewer arrests, improved educational performance and higher graduation rates, according to a new report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study involved more than 2,500 young people in the 7th to 10th grades from Chicago neighborhoods with high crime levels. About half of the subjects participated in interventions provided by two area nonprofits, which included both after school programming and frequent meetings with a “pro-social adult.”
The interventions also included in-school CBT programming, which researchers said are “designed to reduce common judgment and decision-making problems related to automatic behavior and biased beliefs.”
Compared to a control group that did not receive treatments, researchers said violent offense arrests had fallen by 44 percent among young people who had participated in the programming, and arrests stemming from “other crimes” -- categorized as non-drug, non-property or non-violent offenses -- decreased by 36 percent. Additionally, youth involved in the programs demonstrated significant gains in overall educational outcomes, with researchers stating that the programming may result in a 3 to 10 percent increase in high school graduation rates. The programming also has major economic benefits, the authors of the report said.
I never thought when I took the juvenile court bench that I would be working just as hard off the bench to help kids. My county here in Georgia has certainly had its share of misery in the last decade, including a decline in graduation rates, an increase in crime rates, school board mismanagement that resulted in loss of accreditation and removal of board members that led to a mass exodus of residents. The good news is that Clayton County, just south of Atlanta, is on the rebound with an increase in overall graduation rates and a decline in juvenile and adult crime. I have always said: so goes graduation rates, so goes the crime rate. Our venture to turn the ship around began when we decided to confront the challenges within our juvenile justice system -- soaring juvenile arrests, increasing drop-out rates, dangerous gang activity resulting in many drive-by shootings, and kids dying.
In prison I could often tell who would be a target for victimization. I developed this ability the old fashioned way, through observation. Predators abound in that world, so opportunities to witness their attacks were common. Whether it was robbery, rape, extortion or some other attempt to dominate those who were on the losing end had often had something in common. According to the convict code the victims were “weak.” This isn’t surprising, since the code was created by those with an interest in perpetuating such crimes.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in conjunction with the National Center for Youth in Custody (NC4YC) held a webinar Wednesday titled “Family Comes First: Transforming the Justice System by Partnering With Families.” The online event coincided with the release of a new Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) workbook, which was unveiled on Monday.