Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/series/from-the-bureaus/page/7/)
In North Carolina, adult prisoners will build a new confinement facility for juvenile offenders, officials announced. After expanding its juvenile system’s jurisdiction to include 16- and 17-year-olds, the state anticipates a need for more beds for youth who have been adjudicated.
As COVID-19 made shared transportation a potential enabler of disease transmission, it became clear that the introduction of videoconferencing equipment couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time for courthouses and juvenile detention centers across North Carolina.
The young girl is weeping and terrified, surrounded by members of the New York Police Department, her hands cuffed behind her back while outraged protesters shout a mix of pleas and threats to let her go. The chaotic scene was captured on a 21-second snippet of video that was deleted from Twitter about 10 minutes after being posted.
It started with a simple question two months ago: Who are the youth in detention who are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus, and what is being done to get them out?
As North Carolina began to send 16- and 17-year-olds to its juvenile justice system for the first time, year one was meant to be instructive.
Juvenile justice advocates are expressing tempered enthusiasm over the planned closing of California’s state-run facilities.
Sandra Lawson was only months away from graduating high school when she found out her grandfather had died.
When coronavirus blazed through Neuse Correctional Institution in Goldsboro, N.C., in mid-April, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) tested everyone. At last count, the prison had 467 positive cases out of 701 men tested.
First, it was just a headache. A migraine burrowing into his forehead, one that heated and cooled his body, made the room spin a little. But he didn’t usually have migraines. The dizziness and the onset of nausea felt wrong. Like they could be something more. On the outer edges of New York City, as the sound of sirens had started to become more frequent, a troubling thought came to his mind.
As one of the first states to confront the ghastly reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey prepared for what many saw as inevitable: an outbreak in its jails and prisons.