Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/mental-health/page/3/)
Christina Young remembers the day the cops came for her at school.
She was fifteen years old -- a sophomore at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business in lower Manhattan. She and four of her friends were sitting together at a table in the school’s large and chaotic cafeteria.
Paul Reviere is sheriff of Lincoln County, a rural area with just under 8,000 people two hours east of Atlanta. In addition to maintaining safety, he gives what he calls “50-cent tours” to out-of-towners, showing off downtown Lincolnton.
The intriguing thing about human nature is that there is no one way to exist. Just recently, I was speaking with a colleague who struggled to understand why some people cannot handle a heavy workload or stressful situations. Because she can.
Since I was released from prison, I’ve dedicated my life to equipping young leaders with training and tools to fight to end youth incarceration and close youth prisons. Because I’ve lived through it, I know that there is no better way to support my community than by helping end youth incarceration and helping convince our leaders to invest in young people’s futures instead of bars and cells. Many of my fellow leaders in this movement have similar lived experiences.
After it happened, the beating, the arrest, the sudden violence on the way to school, the high school sophomore wasn’t the same.
Steven Cave’s transformation happened in spite of a system that calls itself correctional but instead, he says, perpetuated his worst traumas, beliefs and behaviors. He entered that system in the state that has sentenced the most minors to life without parole, and where solitary confinement was a favorite method of punishment. In 2013, the Department of Justice found the state’s use of it in several facilities was unconstitutional.
Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week wrongly blaming the Parkland shooting on the Department of Education’s School Discipline Guidance package. This guidance, released in 2014, reminded schools of their responsibility to address racial discrimination in school discipline, which affects students in every state.
Minority youth are more likely to become incarcerated than white youth. This fact is so prevalent that even people outside the juvenile justice field are familiar with the term school-to-prison pipeline.
Restrictive therapeutic facilities — inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, group homes and juvenile detention facilities — serve the most challenging youth in society. Before admission, these children and adolescents have often been on the receiving end of countless detentions, suspensions, expulsions, restraints, seclusions and corporal punishment. Many have significant trauma histories.
Over two decades ago, as a favor to a friend, I walked into the very juvenile courtroom that I now have the privilege of presiding over on a daily basis. A racquetball buddy...