Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/prominence/series-featured/page/2/)
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Courts have long mandated fees, aiming to hold youth accountable, deter them from future crime and often to cover the justice system’s administrative and other costs. Yet, advocates of juvenile justice reform contend that those conventional methods of demanding accountability from young offenders are counterproductive, neither serving the interests of youth nor their victims
By September 2020, 11 new unarmed public safety support specialists, many with law enforcement-related backgrounds, were in place and on the Minneapolis Public Schools payroll. Two years and one pandemic later, initial data and interviews with students and staff suggest that fewer Minneapolis students are being punished and, consequently, missing class for suspensions or other punishment.
The past couple of years have been some of the deadliest for many major U.S. cities. Murder rates have spiked and gun sales have surged.
We want the violence to stop. However, our chosen means of addressing violence prevention are shaped by who's leading that conversation. Too often, the results of those discussions have tended to be punitive in nature, resulting in over-policing and mass incarceration.
Before Gisele Castro became executive director of Exalt, a New York nonprofit working to stem what she and others refer to as the school-to-prison pipeline, she spent 25 years at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Service. There, for adults convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine, she worked to arrange alternatives to incarceration. Read our interview with this "staunch supporter of New York state's 'raise-the-age' law."
Separate investigations by the federal Government Accountability Office and Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general that were launched in 2021, are the first inquiries of their kind in more than a dozen years. Those probes target farms, boot camps and similar residential programs whose proprietors claim are therapeutic. Critics call many of those business owners profiteers, operating under the guise of treating teens with mental and/or behavioral disorders and those at-risk for involvement in the juvenile justice system.
Pressured by Worth Rises and similar advocacy groups, the Federal Communication Commission last year imposed ceilings on the costs of interstate calls from convicted people in prisons and the mainly pre-trial detainees in jails. Before the FCC’s action, a handful but growing number of municipalities and states already were moving in that direction.
Since 2000, Judge Donna Scott Davenport has overseen the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, where the county jailed kids in 48% of the cases referred to juvenile court — compared with the statewide average of 5%. Now, state Sen. Heidi Campbell and state Rep. Gloria Johnson have said they are proposing legislation that could result in Davenport’s ouster. A bill starting the process was filed in the state Senate Friday.
Traumatic brain injury among juvenile offenders will be assessed as part of a three-year research project that’s slated to enroll the first of roughly 110 youth and young adult study participants in Florida as early as late January. Ultimately, the study aims to determine which TBI treatments might help keep those youth from cycling in and out of detention, complete their education and succeed at work.
From the courthouse, I was remanded, without bail, to Rockland County Jail. The next morning, I lifted myself off a three-inch-thick mattress, stood and stared out of a window high on the wall of my cell. Blue sky is all I could see. A resolve swept over me: “You need to get through whatever lies ahead so you can get out in the world and discover what life is really about. There has to be a better way to live.” I made that pact with myself.
Racial disparities among juvenile detainees; declining juvenile detentions amid COVID-19; and the impact of criminally charging only those at least 18 years old are topics recently addressed by a range of governmental, academic and nonprofit entities.