California: Young men sit srpind table with built-in chairs in large ron and stairs leading ro balcony above with doors to several rooms.

California: Is this how you want your kids to be treated?

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“How would you want your kids, if they were in these facilities, to be treated?” 

That question was raised by formerly incarcerated youth and current juvenile justice advocate James Martinez at a meeting of California’s Board of State and Community Corrections. The BSCC is a state agency tasked with overseeing jails and county-level juvenile facilities in California. In early November 2022, the board’s Executive Steering Committee, met to begin rewriting critically important rules governing juvenile camps, ranches and halls.

Juvenile justice_youth behind fence: young male offender standing behind chain link fence

New Mexico has lost track of juveniles locked up for life. We found nearly two dozen.

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The New Mexico Corrections Department has lost track of nearly two dozen prisoners in its custody who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, an error that could keep these “juvenile lifers” from getting a chance at freedom under a bill likely to be passed by the state Legislature within days.

Disabled students at higher risk for arrests, dropping out: male detention worker walks a black juvenile offender down a hallway

Disabled students at higher risks for arrests, dropping out and being unready for adulthood

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Bullied at his Philadelphia high school, Earl Morris’ son started defying his teachers and his father and allegedly stole from a convenience store. Those charges against the then 15-year-old, who’d been diagnosed with disabilities including anxiety and depression, were dismissed when a witness failed to appear in court, his father said, recalling what happened five years ago.

Ex-state adviser implicated in youth center abuse lawsuits: two hooded people look out at city from high window

Ex-state adviser implicated in youth center abuse lawsuits

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The girls at New Hampshire's youth detention center called their dormitory leader "Peepin' Dave" because they say he leered at them through a bathroom window. But David Ball, later promoted to chief of operations, also is accused of much worse.

Lawsuit; Illinois agency wrongfully imprisoned children: young black woman in white coat talking into microphones with men in suits at her side

Lawsuit: Illinois agency wrongfully imprisoned children

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Illinois Department of Children and Family Services wrongfully incarcerated hundreds of children in juvenile detention after a court ordered them to be released to their guardian, according to a class action lawsuit filed Thursday by Cook County's public guardian.

Tattoed forearms and hands rest on cell bars.

Analysis: Higher arrest and incarceration rates for Florida girls vs. boys

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Non-felony offenses accounted for two out of three arrests of juvenile girls in Florida, according to “The Justice for Girls Blueprint: The Way Forward for Florida,” recently released by the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center.

Two-thirds of the state's justice-involved girls but roughly one-third of boys — 66% versus 38% — were arrested for felony offenses. Two-thirds of girls and almost one-fifth of boys were incarcerated for non-felonies, according to the center's analysis of data from Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Dashboard, Department of Health Youth Substance Abuse Survey and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey...

study says schooling for incarcerated youth is inferior: boy in juvenile detention holds book behind back as he walks in line with other detainees

Study: Schooling for incarcerated youth is fragmented, inferior

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Most of the 50 states have clearly designated which agencies are in charge of hiring teachers for incarcerated juveniles, creating teaching curriculum and other education services. But how and by whom that instruction gets delivered varies substantially from state to state and locale to locale, resulting in a fragmented system that generally provides inferior instruction, according to a recent report from Bellwether Education Partners.

LGBTQ youth and young adults: An individual standing in the center of six people, all with their backs to the camera, holds in the air a large gay pride flag with stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple flag that symbolizes gay pride.

Litigation and innovation involving LGBTQ juveniles, a disproportionately larger group

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Tailor-made services are important for many justice-involved LGBTQ youth and young adults their advocates contend, because those individuals’ encounters with law enforcement, courts, correctional and other agencies often are in stark contrast to how their heterosexual peers navigate the justice system and society in general.

Juvenile detention rough in La. illustration of persn's silhouette sitting with head in hands in jail cell

Shackles and Solitary: Inside Louisiana’s Harshest Juvenile Lockup

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Scrambling to respond to a wave of violence and escapes from other juvenile detention facilities, Louisiana state officials quietly opened the high-security lockup last summer to regain control of the most troubled teens in their care. Instead, they created a powder keg, according to dozens of interviews, photo and video footage and hundreds of pages of incident reports, emergency response logs, emails and education records.

White woman with long dark hair sits at a round table, teaching juvenile offenders, whose faces are not fully shown, inside a New Jersey juvenile facility.

At detention facilities offering high school diplomas, college classes are seen as a next step

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Four years ago, a social worker from the Middlesex County Juvenile Detention Center asked English professor Alexandra Fields, of nearby Middlesex College, if she would be able to provide college programming for youth incarcerated at that New Jersey facility. Beyond helping them earn their high school diplomas, it offered nothing more  educationally to those graduates. In mid-February 2022, 20 young men across eight of the facilities started working on an associate’s degree from Middlesex, becoming the first such cohort in New Jersey to be on a path toward a college degree.