Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/page/9/)
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?
People ages 18 to 25 are over-represented at every stage of the criminal legal system and have the highest recidivism rate of any age group. It is obvious that we are responding badly to the developmental needs of these emerging adults — and “we” includes everything from schools and health care to law enforcement, judicial and correctional systems.
Behavioral health researchers, often, used to routinely dismiss using cultural rituals to help alter people’s actions, including as a tool to steer at-risk youth away from criminality. For the Photojournalist Alex Milan Tracy captured an Indigenous drumming circle at that state’s Tillamook Youth Correctional Facility.
Moving the most violent and troubled youths to adult prison makes it easier to help others in juvenile facilities, some prosecutors and lawmakers say. Youth justice advocates say Texas is giving up on the children who most need help.
“Solitary confinement tried to break my soul and whatever was left of me after my childhood trauma,” said Harlem, New York, native Guzman, now 30 and the executive director of America on Trial, a New York group that advocates for incarcerated people.
While in solitary, corrections officers sometimes refused to let him shower or made him forego being fed whenever he wasn’t at the opening of the doorway of his solitary cell when a meal arrived, added Guzman.
An expansion in access to federal financial aid through Pell Grants for those who are incarcerated will soon make higher education a bit more available to them. As of 2014, only 15% of people earn a college degree or postsecondary certificate either before or during their incarceration.
Parents whose children were killed in the Robb Elementary School massacre made sobbing pleads for stricter gun laws before legislators early Wednesday on languishing proposals that appeared headed to stall in the face of a Republican majority.
“These incidents could have had multiple victims or multiple perpetrators, which could result in more persons involved than the total number of incidents,” wrote researchers, who collect that data to meet mandates of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Most of the victims were boys, who, as a group, outnumber incarcerated girls, analysts found.
Girls accounted for 31% of all arrested youth in 2019, an increase from 18% in 1990, according to a new report from The Sentencing Project also finding that, as with boys, fewer girls ultimately were incarcerated between 2000 and 2019.