Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/news-system/page/2/)
The U.S. has a shameful record in its treatment of justice-involved youth. While recent Supreme Court decisions are promising, this country has much work left to do in handling young people in contact with the justice system.
At the conclusion of JDAI’s recent annual conference, I became convinced that not only are juvenile justice systems undergoing positive changes nationwide, so is JDAI.
“Building the next generation of juvenile justice leaders” will be the focus of a two-day summit in Washington co-hosted by the nonprofit Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
When it comes to dual status youth — youth involved with both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems — our work reforming the juvenile system is far from complete.
For InsideOUT Writers volunteers like Johnny Kovatch, California's juvenile halls hold an infinite amount of potential and opportunity.
It was the tail-end of rush hour on a Thursday in March, and commuters were packed tightly onto a Brooklyn bus in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Not all of them got out alive.
U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. condemned “excessive” use of solitary confinement of children with mental illness in juvenile facilities.
Exhilaration jolted through my body when I stepped back onto the grounds of Central Juvenile Hall for the first time since my release. I finally knew what it felt like to come back as a free man and not as a detained juvenile. I cherished how different it felt.
It's time to ask whether our costly juvenile justice system is accomplishing what we want it to accomplish.
The hardliner prosecutor teaching a law course in a women’s maximum-security prison in Tennessee got to know inmates as real people rather than just paperwork. It changed his life so much he quit his job as a prosecutor, saying he could no longer be complicit in a system that warehoused for decades people who committed crimes as teenagers. The woman who managed an art gallery in a small Pennsylvania town always considered herself a big believer in law and order — and couldn’t imagine befriending a man serving life without parole on a first-degree murder conviction. Then somebody brought some of the inmate’s artwork to her gallery, and she contacted him. Today, she calls him a son, and he calls her “Mom.”
The former Chicago gang member convicted of first-degree murder for his involvement in a fatal stabbing and beating that took place when he was 13 now has a master’s degree, has counseled countless troubled kids and is a youth justice advocate fighting extreme sentencing of juveniles.