Restorative justice partnerships: Group of around 20 smiling people all wearing lime green t-shirts stand and sit in 3-4 rows on an artificial green turf field surrounded by tall city buildings

Justice organization announces new youth restorative justice partners

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Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) announced October 8 that it will partner with four new communities to build new restorative youth justice diversion programs. Restorative justice includes an accountability process that identifies root causes of youth criminal actions, while providing an opportunity for healing both for the person harmed and the person who has caused harm.

Native American rituals: Native American relder man with long gray hair ho,ding plate of smoking dage and using eagle feather to disperse the smoke

Following Native American rituals, hoping to put youthful offenders on a straight path

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Behavioral health researchers, often, used to routinely dismiss using cultural rituals to help alter people’s actions, including as a tool to steer at-risk youth away from criminality. For the Photojournalist Alex Milan Tracy captured an Indigenous drumming circle at that state’s Tillamook Youth Correctional Facility.

Community probation, community service, crisis intervention and other services are listed on a sign outside a juvenile probation office.

Q&A: Long Island judge seeks collaboration among trauma-focused child welfare and juvenile agencies and youths’ families

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Launched in summer 2021 as an expansion of the incarceration-diversion program, Long Island, N.Y.'s ConcepTS also stands for “collaboration, oversight, nurturing, community, engagement, participation and treatment services.” It’s the brainchild of Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho, who says he has a heart for young people and a love of the law. The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange’s Micah Danney interviewed Camacho about what diversion programs mean for juvenile offenders and the juvenile justice system he helps to oversee.

trauma: young guy is squatting in a corner, his arm supporting his head

Trauma-informed Care in Juvenile Detention Is Not Enough

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While Florida has taken steps toward integrating trauma-informed practices in the juvenile justice system, the state needs to reconsider its treatment of youth. Notably, utilizing trauma-informed care in the juvenile justice system, while necessary, is not sufficient — prevention should be the goal, with trauma-informed services implemented in all child-involved systems. The state must also stop incarcerating children with adults and offer all juveniles in detention/incarceration access to trauma-informed services.

What Does Trauma-informed Mean to Foster Youth?

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For three decades, I have listened in awe to the brave voices of children, youth and families who have shared, in anguish, their past experiences — experiences that anyone would objectively call “adverse” and ones that can have lasting effects on health and well-being.