Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/qa/)
Liz Ryan said she was surprised when the White House tapped her — a prominent advocate who has dedicated her professional life to reforming the juvenile justice system — to be the administrator of the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in May 2022.
End youth homelessness. Achieve zero youth detention. Stop jailing runaways. Ensure kids don’t leave detention to end up homeless.
ATLANTA -- Criminal defense attorney and author J. Tom Morgan said his phone has rumbled late in the night with texts from minors seeking legal advice about police at the door. Today the high-profile lawyer specializes in defending young people, and, as a local district attorney in the past, prosecuted hundreds of people for crimes against children. In an upcoming article in the State Bar of Georgia’s journal, he argues that kids’ behavior hasn’t changed, but the consequences have. “Its not what’s happened in the last 30 years that kids are worse, it’s what we’ve done in our legal system,” he said. Things like zero tolerance, raising the drinking age and criminalizing consensual sex between teens under child abuse laws have put kids in the crosshairs of the police. Last year alone, he spoke at more than 100 events explaining to kids and adults the facts in his book “Ignorance is No Defense, A Teenager’s Guide to Georgia Law.”
JJIE talked to Morgan after he gave a presentation to some 150 parents at a private school in Atlanta on Nov.
With all of the news stories about kids being bullied, we often forget that there are some kids that are labeled “different” who have no control over why they are different. Brad Cohen, author of “Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had," shared his experience of growing up as a child who exhibited several neurological tics because of TS. Brad writes:
In fourth grade I developed the strange new habit of clearing my throat every few seconds, all day long. … Like “Lord of the Flies” the kids in my school turned on the one child who was different from all the rest. … At that time, the social resources for conditions like mine were so few and far between that as my symptoms grew deeper, my mother and brother found themselves alone in the house with a virtual stranger.