Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/series/1-priority/page/29/)
NEW YORK — Ruben Rodriguez, a teen from the Bronx, is on Rikers Island, waiting to stand trial for homicide. By the time he returned to the Box (punitive segregation) in late September, City of New York Correction Department Commissioner Joseph Ponte publicly promised to end punitive segregation for Rikers’ roughly 300 juvenile inmates by 2015.
NEW YORK — Ruben Rodriguez walked into the Robert N. Daveron Complex (RNDC), the main adolescent house on Rikers Island, in a faded stone-colored jumpsuit on April 25. A number of inmates whom he recognized from his previous sentence, bristled with fear, but also showed respect and pity when Ruben said he was back on murder charges.
NEW YORK — On June 17, Ruben Rodriguez got two brightly colored envelopes in the mail. His grandmother had sent a card with a silly cartoon. His mother wrote a more sentimental message on her card and tucked a folded piece of loose-leaf inside it. That was a letter from a girl letting Ruben know she was pregnant with his child and planned to get an abortion.
Page May had only one word for it: torture. That was how she and others with the new activist group We Charge Genocide are classifying police brutality in Chicago in a report compiled for the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the findings of which were presented this week before a crowded room of activists at the Jane Adams Hull House.
The John Howard Association of Illinois, an independent prison watchdog and justice reform advocate, recently published a report introducing ways to reform the criminal justice system for youth prosecuted for serious offenses.
The Hollywood PAL program, one of the largest Police Activities/Athletics League programs in the Los Angeles area, gives students a positive alternative to gangs and drugs.
NEW YORK — The two dozen teenagers who have met on the creaking second floor of Renaissance Center to watch a movie together one night in March are no strangers to their share of street violence. The Renaissance Center features a recording studio, replete with a drum set, a collection of electric and acoustic guitars, a row of microphones, and golden curtains for a backdrop. The teens come to perform songs they have written and composed about their life on the forlorn streets of the South Bronx, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country.
The Compton (Calif.) Unified Board of Education approved in July allowing campus police officers to have AR-15 rifles on school grounds. There was no community input.
The boys at the table in the Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles are tense. Teacher Johnny Kovatch doesn’t hold back, aggressively pushing them to write more and dig deeper inside themselves.
“Today is a day for the residents of Grant and Manhattanville to tell the West Harlem Development Corporation what you need.”