Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/juvenile-justice/page/14/)
Is there ever a “good” youth arrest? Even without the use of excessive force, arrest can prove traumatic and destructive and the effects long lasting. One police leader from a small Pennsylvania town recounted the story of a young person who lost his promising future, with a merit-based scholarship to a four-year college, when police arrested him and charged him with a curfew violation.
It’s been a big week for young people in the justice system.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that those previously sentenced to life without parole as juveniles must have at least a chance at life outside prison walls.
In a historic moment Monday, President Obama used his executive authority to end the use of solitary confinement for youth in the federal prison system.
It remains to be seen whether Montgomery v. Louisiana will be the death knell for JLWOP. As it stands, judges maintain the discretion to conclude that particular juvenile offenders convicted of homicide are, in fact, intrinsically incapable of redemption and will never be fit to re-enter society.
The final report on human remains at a Florida Panhandle reform school has been issued by the University of South Florida. Nearly 100 boys were known to have died at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, most of them African-American.
When officials in four states were asked several years ago what tools they would need to divert youth from the juvenile justice system, a better understanding of trauma was at the top of all their lists.
When did making adults mad become a crime?
I asked myself this question shortly after I started judging in juvenile court when confronted with a docket inundated with disruptive students referred from the schools. Most were misdemeanor incidents involving fights, disorderly conduct, disrupting school, graffiti and theft.
Individualized justice, economic equality and factual accuracy should supply the science driving reform, not century-old biodeterminism.
Increasingly, juvenile justice advocates and system partners are calling for the closure of large, prison-like youth facilities. While these reforms are critically important given the research showing the dangers of confinement — particularly for low-risk youth — the practical reality is that reaching such a paradigm shift will not happen overnight.
The art of leadership, some say, is not in finding followers, but in creating more leaders.
Something I wish I had thought about when I first developed the school-justice partnership.