Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/58/)
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?
A black and white picture of schoolchildren hangs on the wall of Paul Tutwiler’s office. He’s not related to any of the children who attended a segregated school for black people in the early 20th century, nor does he know their descendants. Yet those young faces strike a chord in him.
On a sunny afternoon in 2006, I was driving my four sons to a cookout in Newark, N.J., my hometown.
We had stopped at an intersection when a group of teenagers spilled into the street behind us. They were beating another young man, and it wasn’t a game. My sons started yelling, asking what was happening.
From training to practicing to now teaching, one of the key factors in psychotherapy that continually surfaces is countertransference (sorry self-care), which we know as the phenomenon of the clinician reaction to the client. I prefer to think of countertransference as our “entanglement” with the client — it is never neat and organized. And I think a lot of managing entanglement starts with recognizing that fundamentally, clinicians are entangled with themselves and the stories we create for ourselves. So this is a story about the story about my entanglements.
Imagine: You are 15 years old. Your mother, deep in drug debt, sends you to give a strange man $10. But somehow you know he expects more — your body. The world judges you as reckless, promiscuous, and inconsiderate of others.
—Kenjdra, in state custody
For about three months, Karen Kelly would drive around Enumclaw, Wash., after midnight looking for her 13-year-old daughter, Hollie. She carried Hollie’s photo with her, pulling over to show it to everyone she saw. Sometimes she got lucky. She learned that Hollie had talked a hotel manager into giving her a free room, or that she was camping out near the P.O. boxes in a post office, or that she’d settled into a tent in the bushes behind an industrial park. Hollie remained in Enumclaw, a town of less than 12,000 40 miles southeast of Seattle.
“Youth matters” in determining a juvenile’s sentence declared Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. This comment was offered during oral arguments for Mathena v. Malvo, a statement that seven of the nine justices appeared to agree with.
At the moment, the only experience that seems harder than serving seven years in prison is being free. Yes, you read that correctly. Make no mistake, “gratitude” doesn’t even begin to describe how it feels to be home, reunited with my family. I can finally eat, sleep and bathe when I want.
Five years ago, I was an ordinary mom and like most people I knew nothing about the criminal justice system and quite honestly, like most, I didn’t care. It didn’t affect me.