Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/north-carolina/)
West Charlotte High School had let out only minutes earlier when, hearing gunfire, school officials ordered an immediate lockdown and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers swarmed the campus. That incident, the week before Christmas break 2021, was the ninth time a gun had been found at one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s most troubled public schools since the start of the school year.
By May 6, when over 13,000 people tested positive for coronavirus in North Carolina, only one youth held in custody had been tested. About a month later, the state had tested 110 incarcerated youths, according to Kees: 87 at the Stonewall Jackson Youth Development Center, four at the Chatham Development Center after a staff member contracted coronavirus and 19 at Edgecombe Youth Development Center. All tests were negative.
Orange County in North Carolina has two school districts. One is much tougher than the other on students caught with marijuana on campus.
In North Carolina, adult prisoners will build a new confinement facility for juvenile offenders, officials announced. After expanding its juvenile system’s jurisdiction to include 16- and 17-year-olds, the state anticipates a need for more beds for youth who have been adjudicated.
As COVID-19 made shared transportation a potential enabler of disease transmission, it became clear that the introduction of videoconferencing equipment couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time for courthouses and juvenile detention centers across North Carolina.
From the time she adopted Anthony, at age 4, Wendy Tonker knew he was special.
He was special because he was diagnosed with autism, ADHD and an intellectual disability.
Anthony, now 21, has been enrolled in Durham Public Schools’ (DPS) Exceptional Children Services (EC) program since elementary school. “I have been fighting with DPS EC for a decade now,” Tonker said. “They have horrifically underserved my son.”
Not all students process information identically, respond to their environments the same way or can control their behavior with the same restraint. Yet they are held to the same standard punishment system in school. “Someone who might have an attention deficit disorder and can’t stay still is standing up in class, walking around and is distracting the teacher; that person could be charged with disorderly conduct at school just from the definition of the law,” said Eric Zogry, with the North Carolina Office of the Juvenile Defender.
As North Carolina began to send 16- and 17-year-olds to its juvenile justice system for the first time, year one was meant to be instructive.
Juvenile justice advocates are expressing tempered enthusiasm over the planned closing of California’s state-run facilities.
Now that every state has passed laws to raise the age at which youth can be automatically shifted to adult court and facilities, isn’t there some cause for a relaxation...
Few seem to be disputing the brain science that suggests that the impulsivity of adolescence lingers well into technical adulthood. Even so, opposing camps, in both...