Q&A raise the age: Giselle Castro headshot - young woman with short brown hair wearing off-white suit

Q&A: Exalt’s Gisele Castro on the importance of New York’s “raise the age” law 

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Before Gisele Castro became executive director of Exalt, a New York nonprofit working to stem what she and others refer to as the school-to-prison pipeline, she spent 25 years at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Service. There, for adults convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine, she worked to arrange alternatives to incarceration. Read our interview with this "staunch supporter of New York state's 'raise-the-age' law."

juvenile detention fees: stone sign for juvenile court entrance with flowers in front

Study: With homicide the No. 1 cause, formerly incarcerated Ohio juveniles’ death rate was six to nine times higher than that of other youth

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Death rates were 5.9 times higher for previously incarcerated 11- to 21-year-olds in Ohio than in that state’s general population of youth enrolled in Medicaid health insurance for low-income people, according to a study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Open Network.

In a finding researchers said was especially startling, formerly incarcerated females died at nine times the rate of the general population.

“More than half of all deaths were among youths convicted of crimes against persons,”  wrote the researchers, who examined 3,645 formerly incarcerated youth. “More deaths occurred in youths who were incarcerated for the first time and in youths who spent less than or equal to [one] year in custody.”

Day Two: John Jay Juvenile Justice Conference

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NEW YORK – The John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice is holding a two-day conference for journalists on its campus in New York Monday and Tuesday. While the conference, Kids Behind Bars, Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?, is primarily meant for journalists, many of the topics will be of interest not only to those in the field, but the general public as well. JJIE/Youth Today’s John Fleming and Clay Duda are attending the conference and continue their reporting today. For Day One coverage head over to our post here. DAY TWO

Panel One:

Mike Bocian, provided the keynote address Tuesday morning.

Arkansas Juvenile Justice Reform: A Blueprint for National Success?

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In 1991, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published an article on the state’s juvenile justice system bearing the ominous headline “Stacked in centers, youths in trouble fall through the cracks.” The story also featured comments from a consultant, who said  –  two years prior  –  “too many youths who could better be served in community-based treatment were being inappropriately and unnecessarily held in state confinement.”

Over the next seven years, matters only worsened for the state’s juvenile justice system. In 1998, The Democrat-Gazette published a five-part series entitled “Juvenile Justice: The War Within” detailing the failings of the state’s juvenile incarceration sites. Three years after the series was published, two juveniles at the Alexander Youth Services Center – the state’s largest juvenile incarceration facility – committed suicide within a span of six months. A year later, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice conducted an investigation of the facility, determining that the conditions at Alexander were so substandard that the constitutional rights of detained youth were being violated. By 2007, state officials decided it was time to completely overhaul Arkansas’ juvenile justice system, culminating with the enactment of state Senate Resolution 31, which authorized a comprehensive study with the intent of reducing “reliance on large juvenile correctional facilities” within the state.

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

African Children in Prison: An Introduction

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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.

Chicago’s Cease Fire Making a Difference in Lives of Youth

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Earlier this week, PBS’s Frontline aired The Interrupters, a documentary by director Steve James. James, best known perhaps for Hoop Dreams, spent a year filming in Chicago. He documented the efforts of Cease Fire, an organization that works to reduce and prevent gang violence in some of the most deadly parts of the city. The film highlights the model developed by Cease Fire. It is an approach to youth violence and crime in general that deserves more attention.

Planet Connect Offers Grants to High Schoolers

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Planet Connect is offering high school students grants of $1,000 to implement their problem-solving projects and participate in a local internship focused on wildlife conservation. Winners will be provided $500.00 to turn their projects into reality. After completing their projects in June, winners will participate in an 80-hour wildlife conservation or natural resource internship in their local community during the summer of 2012.  At the end of the internship they will be awarded a $500.00 stipend.