Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/juvenile-incarceration/)
Read the individual stories of Xochtil Larios, youth justice coordinator, Jacob Jackson, a community organizer, and Israel Villa, mentor to many juvenile justice-involved youth, about how personal experiences in the juvenile justice system shape their individuals' advocacy of justice reform.
In the months leading up to the June 30 shutdown of California’s more than 100-year-old lockups for juveniles, teenagers through 25-year-olds convicted of crimes such as robbery, rape and murder were transferred to county-run juvenile detention facilities nearer to their homes.
At the heart of this issue is whether it is appropriate to sentence children to die in prison, with no chance of being considered for release. Half a century ago, offenders in the U.S. of any age were rarely sentenced to life without parole, and it was not until 1978 that states began trying youths as adults. Between 1985 and 2001, however, youths convicted of murder were actually more likely to enter prison with a life sentence than adults convicted of the same crime.
People ages 18 to 25 are over-represented at every stage of the criminal legal system and have the highest recidivism rate of any age group. It is obvious that we are responding badly to the developmental needs of these emerging adults — and “we” includes everything from schools and health care to law enforcement, judicial and correctional systems.
Girls accounted for 31% of all arrested youth in 2019, an increase from 18% in 1990, according to a new report from The Sentencing Project also finding that, as with boys, fewer girls ultimately were incarcerated between 2000 and 2019.
A judge on Wednesday reduced from 55 years to 30 years the prison sentence of a 24-year-old Alabaman, arrested at 15 and convicted at 19 for his involvement in a 2015 burglary resulting in police fatally shooting a 16-year-old participant in that home break-in.
“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.
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.
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.
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.