Nationally, on any given night, approximately 81,000 youth are confined to juvenile facilities and 10,000 children are held in adult jails and prisons. Approximately 1 in 10 young male high school dropouts is incarcerated or in juvenile detention. For African Americans, that number is 1 in 4. Research shows that just over two million youth under the age of 18 were arrested in 2008. Of these two million, about 95 percent had not been accused of violent crimes. In 2010, of the nearly 100,000 youth under the age of 18 who were serving time in a juvenile residential placement facility, 26 percent had been convicted of property crimes only, such as burglary, arson, or theft. Access to education both stems the tide of incarceration and improves inmates chances of re-acclimating to society after their release.
“A little-known Justice Department agency is supposed to tackle this problem: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which has been mandated by Congress since 1988 to try to shrink the racial gap by providing grants and training to local juvenile courts and law enforcement agencies. In return, states receiving federal dollars must gather data on inequality, explore why it’s happening and pursue solutions.“
The Marshall Project
September 19, 2018
Read More"One Sunday morning in April, a supervisor at New Orleans' Youth Study Center pulled out a lined notebook used to document activity inside the city's juvenile jail, and scrawled in black ink a brief description of what would be the first in a series of troubling incidents that day."
New Orleans Times Picayune
August 23, 2018
Read More"Sadly, the Texas Department of Juvenile Justice has been making policy decisions about juvenile offenders with inaccurate data for more than two years. That's because the department is using an outdated, faulty data system that was developed in-house more than 25 years ago. The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that these problems have led to compromised decisions regarding treatment costs, staffing ratios, re-incarceration rates and health care costs, to name a few. This is unacceptable."
Dallas Morning News
August 17, 2018
Read More"As the law now stands, teens aged 14 and older who are charged with certain serious offenses can be sent to adult court for adjudication at the behest of a judge via what’s called a transfer hearing. Young teens charged with murder and some sexual offenses are automatically transferred to adult court."
Chronicle of Social Change
August 14, 2018
Read More"The study found that 37 states require or permit the juvenile court system to bill families for attorneys’ fees when a lawyer is appointed to represent a child, bills that can run into thousands of dollars. Four states require administrative or application fees, while seven other states’ laws permit the practice. These fees range from $10 to as much as $400."
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
August 14, 2018
Read More"In his study “School Resource Officers and the Criminalization of Student Behavior,” University of Tennessee sociology professor Matthew Theriot found that students in schools with SROs were nearly five times more likely to be arrested for disorderly conduct, which, as mentioned earlier, can encompass a wide range of non-criminal behavior."
The American Conservative
August 13, 2018
Read More"Earlier this year, a federal judge in Connecticut said yes. The judge decided that a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that forbade mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles should apply to 18-year-olds like Cruz, and granted his request to be resentenced. It’s one of a small but growing number of cases in which courts are grappling with what to do with young adults who commit the most serious crimes."
The Marshall Project
August 12, 2018
Read More"Juveniles commit crime at rates lower than men in their 40s or 50s, so 'ignoring the juvenile crime rates and continuing to enforce curfew laws makes absolutely no sense. Juveniles are not predisposed to commit crime, they don’t have to be feared'."
The Marshall Project
July 31, 2018
Read More"The Closer to Home program launched six years ago. It’s the center piece of juvenile justice reform in Texas. 'What it showed policy makers both locally and at the state level is that youth do better when they’re closer to their families,' Griffiths explained."
Fox 4 Dallas
July 23, 2018
Read More"Three years ago, when New York City banned solitary confinement for inmates younger than 22 and curtailed it for others, Mayor Bill de Blasio held up the policy as a model for reform. But since the rules were approved, the city has stepped up a longstanding practice of transferring some inmates to correctional facilities elsewhere in the state where no such restrictions exist."
New York Times
July 22, 2018
Read More"A new report from several organizations, including Texas Appleseed and Disability Rights Texas, found that there’s been a 156 percent increase in referrals to juvenile probation for terroristic threats. The data from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department also revealed a 600 percent increase in referrals for exhibition of firearms"
Houston Public Media
July 17, 2018
Read More"Instead of linking children to services or out-of-home placements through juvenile court adjudication, Senate Bill (SB) 439 would instead direct counties in the state to develop the “least restrictive” alternatives to the juvenile justice system. That could mean a greater reliance on the dependency court system, where child protective services agencies are tasked with providing services to vulnerable children and families."
The Appeal
July 17, 2018
Read More"In general, research has suggested that even one arrest leads to about a 50 percent increased risk of dying young. And when youth are detained, the risk increases again, and long-term incarceration increases it even more."
Undark
July 16, 2018
Read More"The study found young adults whose fathers had been incarcerated while they were minors were more likely to use hard drugs and watch more than 50 hours of TV a week than young adults whose parents hadn’t been incarcerated. Young adults whose mothers had been incarcerated were more likely to have sex in exchange for money, skip doctor visits and use the emergency department as their usual source of health care."
Nashville Channel 5
July 12, 2018
Read More"One byproduct of this shift is the emptying of youth correctional facilities across the country. Recent data suggest that there were nearly 1,300 fewer facilities operating in 2016 than in 2000. This raises a question: What is happening to these places? And, more importantly, what potential do they hold?"
The Governing Institute
June 28, 2018
Read More"This is a significant development in the rapidly growing interest across the country to find ways to enhance public safety by improving outcomes for emerging adults (a term used to define the developmental stage involving 18 to 25-year-olds)."
Columbia University Justice Lab
June 27, 2018
Read More"The defendant, Keyon Harrison, argued his sentence of life with the possibility of parole was unconstitutional. Harrison's argument relied partly on a string of Iowa and U.S. supreme court decisions in recent years that have changed the way courts handle juvenile sentencing. In recent years, the Iowa Supreme Court has struck down life sentences without parole and mandatory minimum sentences for juveniles. But the court on Friday said Harrison's sentence does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment."
Des Moines Register
June 25, 2018
Read More"To protect student confidentiality, those formal threat assessments are highly secret. But one Oregon family agreed to allow an unfettered view into their case as it unfolded. The family provided documents and records of meetings with school officials and allowed a reporter into their home for extended periods over several months. They did this, they said, because they hoped making visible the experience of undergoing a threat assessment would inform the debate about how to keep students safe. What happened to their son sheds light on how the desire to thwart a shooting can have unintended consequences."
The Oregonian
June 24, 2018
Read More"Most states require health education in all public schools, and state laws have been enacted in many states to require health teachers to include lessons on tobacco, drugs and alcohol, cancer detection and safe sex. Two states are going further: New York’s new law adds mental health instruction to the list in kindergarten through 12th grade; Virginia requires it in ninth and 10th grades."
Pew Trusts
June 15, 2018
Read More"Solitary confinement is merely one symptom of the cruel and inhumane practice of incarcerating children in adult jails and prisons. Studies confirm what common sense tells us: young people are safer, and do better, when they are in age-appropriate settings with other youth. The community is safer as well."
Philadelphia Inquirer
June 12, 2018
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