By |

This summer, the JJIE brings you The Chicago Project, a sometimes multimedia, sometimes straight news, sometimes long form and always objective effort to cover a broad variety of reporting on youth issues from that city. The Project is a collaboration between the JJIE and seasoned reporters and students and is led by Eric Ferkenhoff, a former criminal justice and education beat reporter with the Chicago Tribune who is currently a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. His creation, The Chicago Bureau is a platform that seeks, “through an objective and narrow lens, to make sense of macro issues.” Now, through the JJIE, that reporting, that exploration of the issues and the lives of young people, will reach a wider readership. The aim here is good, solid journalism, but this is also an effort to give voice to some of the nation’s most talented young journalists so they can give voice to other young people who have no voice at all.

For Kids in Juvenile Detention, Creating Hope Through Writing and Art

By |

For the better part of the last two decades, The Beat Within has been committed to a mission of providing incarcerated youth with a forum where they can write (and draw) about the things that matter most to them, explore how they have lost connection with those things they value, and consider how they might re-connect to positive situations in their lives through the power of the written word. This is a program that started small, in the Bay Area, with a commitment to provide detained kids between the ages of 11 to 18 with a safe space to share their ideas and experiences while promoting literacy, self-expression, some critical thinking skills, and healthy, supportive relationships with adults and their community. That modest local effort has grown into a nationwide program that touches the lives of more than 5,000 youth in detention. Today, you can find weekly Beat workshops going on in 12 California county juvenile halls, from Alameda to San Diego. We are partnering with universities from U.C. Berkeley to the University of Hawaii.

KAWS installation of 27 circular paintings at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. March, 2012.

From Graffiti to Fine Art: KAWS at the High

By |

When a Jersey City teenager started tagging and defacing public advertisements back in the early 1990’s, he had no clue it would turn into a lucrative art career. But that’s the story of Brian Donnelly, better known as “KAWS,” that has led him to a multi-sight exhibition at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. Perched on the top floor above the High’s Picasso to Warhol exhibit, KAWS’ installment “DOWN TIME” seems to bring the Modernism housed in the levels below into the modern times they helped create. His work is strange, yet strikingly familiar, and why wouldn’t it be? It’s essentially a commentary on pop-culture, drawn from pop culture and stamped on pop culture -– it has become pop culture.

A Look Inside Atlanta Public Schools [INFOGRAPHIC]

By |

When the U.S. Department of Education released the latest installment of the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), statistics covering the 2009-10 academic school year, last week it made headlines around the country. The CRDC represents a wealth of information from just about every corner of our country’s educational landscape. The report also shined some light on a number of gaps in educational opportunity and discipline on a national scale. Every state, school, district and county with a public school system is in there with detailed numbers attached. The Office of Civil Rights, a division of the Department of Education, has been collecting CRDC information since 1968 to help identify gaps, disparities and trends in educational achievement and opportunities.

Heading to Court. Pademba Central Prison. Freetown, Sierre Leone.

African Children in Prison: An Introduction

By |

There is no qualifying the corners of human suffering around the globe. It is all bad, from massacre sites, to famine zones. Still, if you consider just how dark the outlook for a human can be on God’s green Earth, observe the work in West Africa of the Spanish photographer Fernando Moleres. Few places in the world hold the level of hopelessness of an African prison, for the most part vortexes that may release a human but never the human spirit. Now imagine a prison in a failed state in Africa.

Focus on Youth: The Naked Truth of Portland Through the Eyes of Teenagers

By |

In the nation’s consciousness the Pacific Northwest stands out there on the edge of the ocean, crisp, wet, clean and green. It is our better half, poking us to a cleaner lifestyle, forcing us to look to the outdoors, to the natural beauty around us, reminding us of the things we need to do for our inner selves. We know it’s so, there is too much out there reverberates with the truth of it all. Healthy people, pristine forests, water, water everywhere. Fill your lungs with some fresh air and live a good life.

JJIE Joins Investigative News Network

By |

The JJIE.org is the newest member of the Investigative News Network, a consortium of more than 60 non-profit newsrooms in North America. “We are excited about having JJIE and Kennesaw State University as part of the network,” Kevin Davis the CEO and Executive Director of the INN said in a press release. “Juvenile justice issues are chronically underreported by the mainstream media and we are delighted to help bring high quality and persistent coverage of this important area.”

The INN counts among its members the Washington, D.C.- based Center for Public Integrity, National Public Radio, OpenScerets.org and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, New York-based ProPublica, the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting and Minneapolis-based MinnPost.com to name a few. The stated mission of the Los Angeles-based INN is to help member "non-profit news organizations produce and distribute stories with the highest impact possible, and to become sustainable nonprofit organizations." “Joining the INN collaboration is a logical step in the JJIE.org’s movement into a national news organization covering youth justice issues,” said JJIE.org Executive Director Leonard Witt, who calls juvenile justice the civil rights issue of our time.

The Best of JJIE in 2011

By |

This holiday season, before you are reach for the eggnog, after you rip open the presents, when you’ve finished gearing up for visits from the family and friends, take a few minutes to look over some of the best work JJIE has generated this year. Starting tomorrow and continuing throughout the week we are posting compelling pieces that ran in 2011. These stories are rich with details about some of the most important issues dealing with youth today, from homelessness, to drug abuse, to sexuality, to juvenile crime. They are a sampling of our best work; which means they are not only well written, they get to the heart of what we do here at the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. They, in short, are stories of young people and the challenges, heartbreaks and joys they face every day.

Movie: Adventures of TinTin will Delight Audiences Both New and Old

By |

More than 80 years after the comic strip was first published in a right-wing Belgium newspaper, The Adventures of TinTin will have a chance to captivate yet another generation’s sense of wonder through the exploits of the now infamous young reporter. What strikes you from the opening scene is the breathtaking quality of animation. The ink-lined doodles of cartoonist Herge have been replaced with innovative, almost life-like 3D animation. Hair flows in the afternoon breeze while an artist captures TinTin’s likeness in a bustling European square. It’s a scene that grasps so near reality you can’t help but second-guess the validity of what you’re witnessing.

MSNBC Documentary Gives a Voice to Kids Sentenced as Adults

By |

There are many imperfections in the nation’s criminal justice system. So many, it’s hard to know where to start. Take your pick: The public defender system; death row; life without parole or the whole idea of housing convicts together in hopes of rehabilitating them. Poke around a bit. You’ll find some disturbing problems. None, however, will shake you to the core like seeing a child doing hard time behind bars, serving a sentence twice as long as he is old.