Juvenile Sentencing: Two policeman holding Black male teen between them walt around whote police car in a grassy park

Minorities are less likely than whites to bypass courts for community-based rehabilitation, new analysis finds

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Citing, among others, the case of a Black boy who first was incarcerated, at 14, for stealing candy and, at 16, died at a restrictive wilderness camp where he was sent for violating curfew and other parole violations, this new report from The Sentencing Project suggests that U.S. courts divert comparatively fewer minority youth into community-based service or other rehabilitation. And diversion, overall, is sought less often than it should be.

The word "criminal" is engraved on a building.

Court watchers urge change in Florida, which is No. 1 in prosecuting youth as adults

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Since 2007, 18 states have raised to 18 the age at which a person can be criminally charged as an adult, according to a 2021 report from The Sentencing Project. In a previous report, that organization concluded that 250,000 youth nationwide were being charged as adults annually in 2000. By 2019, that number was 53,000, an 80% drop.

Detention diversion: two young women in orange t-shirts and dark pants stand in front of a wall with several posters and notices

A New York City detention-diversion project is reserved for girls and queer youth

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Since Just Us launched in January, 25 youth have enrolled in a three-year pilot project that pays girls and queer youth involved in the criminal justice system, or who are at-risk for winding up there, to participate in projects aimed at keeping them out of detention facilities.

Run by New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services and created by a Vera Institute of Justice task force, JustUs provides individual and group counseling; legal advocacy; employment workshops; and internships for Brooklyn youth. The program serves females who are lesbian, bisexual and straight and youth who are non-binary, trans or queer.

“A lot of times, people are looking for support and they want to be heard and seen,” said Helianis Quijada Salazar, director of JustUs. “We try to customize everything to meet the unique needs of a person.”

Nonprofits push parole reform and housing for parolees

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Since being released from New York City’s Rikers Island jail — where he’d been sentenced to four months for not being where his parole officer expected him to be on a certain day and time — Dakem Roberts has been living in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. 

It was his latest incarceration since, in the late 1970s, when he was 16, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He’d been arrested for his involvement in a robbery whose victim died the next day of heart failure, he said.  

NY juvenile crime law: Green Double door entry to brick building with "Juvenile Division" sign above doors

Homicide likely to be only crime charged to New Yorkers under 12

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Unless accused of criminally negligent homicide, no child younger than 12 could be legally arrested, detained or brought before a judge, according to legislation New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears poised to sign. Approved by the state’s legislature, the bill undoes a 1909 law allowing the arrests of kids as young as 7.

NYC parade honors essential youth workers

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During the rollercoaster ride of a pandemic, it was Maxene Foster’s job to help make sure that cash-strapped Bronx residents got fed, were safely sheltered and so forth. For those efforts, the 20-year employee of Bronxworks, was tapped to represent the 900 staffers of that nonprofit agency during that rarest of Big Apple events: a ticker-tape parade. The ticker-tape, New York City parade celebrated youth probation officers, along with workers from nonprofit agencies, transit and other institutions deemed essential workplaces during the pandemic.

NY marijuana laws: Two hand-rolled marijuana joints rest on lid and glass jar lying on its side with marijuana buds in it.

Legalizing recreational marijuana likely means fewer arrests of juveniles of color

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The new law is retroactive. It allows persons to have prior marijuana-related convictions for which, under the new rules, they would not be arrested, to be expunged from their record. Expungement of prior records was critical to ensuring fairer justice for communities disproportionately policed, arrested and affected by drug policies, said New York State Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes (D-Buffalo). “Black communities, brown communities, have always been the target of these laws,” Peoples-Stokes said. “If we’re going to take the market above ground, we have to remove those convictions.”

Real justice for juveniles requires that judges, lawyers and court employees be trained in youth development, cultural distinctions among youth and how trauma may drive how youth behave in court, according to several youth justice groups.

Opinion: Youth Justice Needs Specialized Training of Judges, Lawyers, Court Employees, and Courtroom Language that Doesn’t Demean

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“Move the bodies.” That’s what a defense lawyer recently overheard an employee in juvenile court say, as if the young people being brought into the courtroom for the next hearing were animals to be herded. The dehumanizing of young people involved in the criminal legal system is common, unfortunately. Those comments, and the attitudes underlying them, can have detrimental effects on youth who hear themselves spoken about with bias, disapproval and disrespect.

Girl in hooded jacket with crowd of robots behind her

Juvenile Systems Need to Listen to, Trust Young People

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The supposedly immaculate stone walls feel as if they are about to close in on me. I wait on court date after court date for a woman of privilege to apply a sentence or provide a “safe” placement for me. This woman asks questions every time I am dragged into that room by the shackles and cuffs that bind my voiceless frame.