Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/prominence/homepage-featured/page/20/)
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It’s not uncommon for those traumatized by gun violence to project what outsiders might view as a kind of superwoman or superman persona — one that can melt away at any given moment — whose complexities may not be fully understood. Those who fund scientific research largely have not seen fit to examine the toll on families devastated by gun-violence deaths.
Everyone deserves access to justice. Eight years ago, I took a chance that the community would show up to support legal services – and justice – for vulnerable kids and young adults.
I’ll never forget the first client who walked through our doors or any of the clients I’ve represented. As I step down from leading Arizona Legal Women and Youth Services (ALWAYS) and turn the reins over to a brilliant successor, I can’t help but reflect on all that I’ve learned, felt, and hoped during my time running a legal aid center. At ALWAYS, we serve human trafficking survivors and children and young adults affected by homelessness, abuse, and the foster care system. With the exception of trafficking survivors, everyone we serve is 24 years old or younger.
Fewer juveniles were placed in restraints and more reported that they’ve had positives dealings with staffers at juvenile agencies, according to April 2021 data voluntarily submitted by 148 pre-trial and other short-term detention facilities, longer-term correctional facilities, assessment and in-community residential programs in 32 states. Released in August by the Performance-based Standards Learning Institute, partnering with Vera Institute, the snapshots of data gauge COVID-19’s impact on juveniles in those states and on their families who, with in-person visits banned during he pandemic, had to find other ways to connect.
Juvenile Justice Resource Hub curates research on juvenile justice policy and practice, reviews of innovative programs and various other explorations and advisories on topics including justice reform, mental and behavioral health, gun violence, foster care, racial and economic parity/disparities.
A University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health analyzed 13 years’ worth of hospital records for almost 16,000 patients aged 19 and younger, starting roughly in 2013. Black girls in those reports were injured more often than any group other than Black boys. Whites had the lowest injury rates among all races of youth, according to the analysis, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics.
Based on a September 2020 analysis finding that South Carolina schools in 2018 referred almost 61,000 students to juvenile courts solely for being excessively absent from school, the Council on State Governments Justice Center recently re-issued guidance for changing juvenile probation protocols that aim to improve the students' educational prospects and classroom attendance.
Juvenile offenses involving property, drug and public order offenses, combined, declined in 2019 to their lowest levels since 2005, according to recently released National Center on Juvenile Justice data also showing that probation, rather than detention, increasingly was assigned in five categories of juvenile crime.
The Georgetown University Center for Juvenile Justice Reform is preparing to train this fall's inaugural class of juvenile justice executives and rank-and-file detention facility staffers in protocols aimed at limiting the use of solitary confinement of youth.
This is how practitioners of restorative justice approach things: First, focus on building strong, authentic relationships in a community, including schools that now are reopening. Then, if and when community members or students make a mistake or cause harm, rather than simply looking at which rule was broken and which punishment should be prescribed, collaborate to help ensure that the erring individual has the space and support to hold herself or himself accountable.
Defendants who are 18 years old and younger will have the same access to legal counsel as adults in Washington, starting next January. That new law trails another juvenile justice reform, which took effect on July 25, aimed at trimming the number of youth in foster care who wind up in juvenile detention. The latter aims to expand the number of community-based endeavors offering trauma-informed rehabilitative care that is culturally competent and focused on racial equity among youth in the justice system. Currently those less restrictive, community placements are available to 25% of juveniles in the state, according to legislators who drafted the measure. The initiative expanding juveniles’ access to lawyers mandates that juveniles can phone, videoconference or talk in person with a lawyer before waiving any constitutional rights, if a law enforcement officer, among other things:
Questions a youth after advising that person of rights granted under the landmark Miranda ruling.