Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/covid-19/page/2/)
At a time when COVID-19 cases continue to rise at correctional facilities across the country, Deidra Bridgeforth considers herself lucky. Leading the juvenile detention system in Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Memphis, Bridgeforth seems almost surprised their detention system has been spared from the virus.
(SLIDESHOW)
When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke in New York City this spring, the most vulnerable populations were at the bottom of a long list of people who desperately needed help during the first few months of business and school closures, shortages of personal protective equipment, food and household necessities.
More than 40,000 K–12 public school students in Washington experienced homelessness in 2017–18, a number that has nearly doubled in the past decade and likely will continue to grow because of pandemic-driven job losses. For these youth, remote schooling might mean attending class in a shelter room they share with their mother and two siblings. It might mean missing classes due to glitchy Wi-Fi or insufficient cellphone data. And, especially for homeless youth who are on their own, it might mean not having an adult who can help them with assignments and prod them to stay on track.
Across the United States, surging COVID-19 cases are risking the health and safety of youth in juvenile justice facilities. In November, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) released a report examining a summer outbreak inside California’s state-run youth correctional system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ).
Shortly after our report was released, a second outbreak sparked. As of Nov. 30, confirmed COVID-19 cases spiked by 20 youth in a single week (97 total youth cases to date). DJJ’s first COVID-19 crisis serves as a warning: Lawmakers and service providers must step up to protect our nation’s youth.
As Latinx and Black Americans experience highly disproportionate rates of coronavirus infections, mainstream and progressive commentators correctly conclude that conditions of poverty, including cramped living and working spaces, forced returns to work and less access to quality health care, are responsible for higher case counts in communities of color. When new infections shifted strongly from racially diverse, Democrat-voting to mostly white, Republican-voting states this summer, commentators issued political criticisms but refrained from suggesting innate cognitive or moral problems, even as media reports showed unmasked crowds flouting public health standards. For more information on JJIE Hub Newly Added Resources, go to JJIE Resource Hub | Newly Added Resources
Contrast that restraint with the mass blame game that ensued when coronavirus cases rose among young people. Commentators as diverse as California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, MSNBC host Chris Hayes, Dr. Irwin Redlener, New York Times reporters and scores of others hurled epithets such as “selfish,” “reckless,” “partying” and delusional “invincibility” at teenagers and college-age adults to charge them with moral and cognitive defects.
Why the abrupt, often angry change in tone when those infected were young rather than black, brown or older white adults? After all, many of the same challenging conditions apply to young people that apply to people of color.
Young people’s risks for certain behaviors derive from their much higher poverty rates compared to older Americans, not innate recklessness.
Since 2016, Elder Yusef Qualls has been on a tireless campaign to have officials in Michigan revisit a criminal case that has kept his son incarcerated for over two decades.
A so-called “juvenile lifer,” Qualls’ son, also named Yusef Qualls, has lived within Michigan’s adult correctional system since 1997. At 17 Qualls was sentenced to life without parole after police linked him as an accomplice to the murder of a woman in Detroit. Elder Qualls has been a juvenile justice advocate since his son’s incarceration began. But the fight took a new turn when, in 2016, the Supreme Court retroactively banned sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders. That meant the courts had to revisit his son’s case.
NEW YORK — They all had disturbing stories, and they all had a familiar ring to them.
Yakov, who declined to give his last name, was waiting in line at the Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan waiting to take a leisurely ferry trip across the bay to Staten Island when he was told to get out by other passengers. He was wearing a mask, he said, but that didn’t matter as much as his conservative garb.
“They’re looking for an excuse to hate us, and they found it in the virus,” the 16-year-old said. “The pandemic has given them the freedom to say what they always have wanted.”
Yehuda Weinstock took his children upstate to go apple picking. “We were treated like we had the plague,” he said. ‘What do you say to your children?”
Coronavirus and the fear it has stoked across the city after bodies were piled up outside hospitals in the spring has led to the resurgence of a social virus. Scarred by daily experiences of anti-Semitism, Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn fear the pandemic and the restrictions that come with it will incite hatred and violence toward them.
The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the very real and dangerous problems of educational inequity in this country — and it has exacerbated them. Nowhere is this more stark than in the experiences of youth in the juvenile justice system — youth already routinely ignored, disenfranchised and left behind. Youth incarcerated during 2020 will likely have even less education than those incarcerated before the pandemic.
Youth have long faced challenges in receiving an education in the juvenile justice system. A new report, “Credit Overdue: How States Can Mitigate Academic Credit Transfer Problems,” highlights the numerous shortcomings of educational programs within juvenile justice facilities that persisted even before the additional obstacles created by COVID-19.
Youth in juvenile justice detention centers and longer-term placements face educational instability as they are moved from facility to facility within the juvenile justice system. The curriculum of juvenile justice schools is often academically inferior and may not align with state requirements and standards.
MACON, Georgia — Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke first heard about school-justice partnerships five years ago on the other side of the country, at a juvenile justice conference in Phoenix. But the successful program that inspired him started only 70 miles away from Macon, in Clayton County.
Nearly two decades ago, the chief judge of Clayton County’s juvenile court pioneered an approach aimed at keeping children out of the criminal justice system and in school. His strategy was to address misconduct within the school system and replace exclusionary discipline — like expulsions and suspensions — with services children needed. The model he devised, called a school-justice partnership, recognized that underlying many school disciplinary problems are histories of trauma and unmet mental health needs — and that responding to children’s disciplinary problems by involving them with the juvenile justice system only increases their risk for further justice system involvement. Under Cooke’s leadership, the Bibb County School District’s school-justice partnership had a successful start during the 2018-19 school year.
In a long-awaited decision, California leaders have moved to close the state’s youth correctional institutions managed by the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Throughout its 80-year history, DJJ has come under harsh criticism for its prison-like conditions, rampant violence and dramatic racial disparities among youth behind its walls.
Recently, the rapid spread of COVID-19 inside DJJ facilities sparked community outrage. Youth at DJJ were already exposed to traumatic conditions. Now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they experience further isolation from family and peers as well as a severe lack of rehabilitative programming. This public health crisis exposes DJJ’s inherent flaws and patterns of neglect.
On Aug.