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All in Juvenile Justice News
When it comes to overhauling its juvenile justice system, Virginia has garnered a reputation as a model of teamwork and progress. Yet even in a state poised to set a national standard, it’s still bedeviled by some of the same problems seen in other states, thanks in part to an outdated national attitude that juvenile offenders only deserve punishment.
The American Civil Liberties Union is applauding indictments announced this week against four guards at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, where law enforcement officials say detainees were encouraged to attack others as a form of discipline.
West Virginia is one of only a few states with rising levels of young people behind bars, and advocates say part of the issue is a lack of behavioral health care. (WV Virginia Center on Budget and Policy)
CHARLESTON, W. Va. – Lack of behavioral health care for children may be undermining West Virginia's efforts to reduce truancy, cut juvenile incarceration and improve foster care, advocates say.
Rochester, N.Y. — (WHAM) - It is designed to help young men and women in trouble with the law, but many close to the juvenile justice system say it is failing them and putting the lives of others in the community in danger.
There is a push for reform to bring the juvenile justice system up to speed with crimes being committed by kids and teens today. Many say a local, high profile case is a prime example as to why change is needed.
A group of Republican and Libertarian groups spoke today in support of conservative-led juvenile justice reform, including an update to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).
“By not addressing criminal justice, from the ground level, with kids, we are missing an opportunity,” said Arthur Rizer, the justice policy director at the R Street Institute. “Conservatives hold up family as bedrock, but too often we are deaf to the basic needs of families. As conservatives we have to stop caring only about kids when they’re in the womb.”
It’s 6 p.m. on a Wednesday and a group of Davis High students have just listened to the charges against one of their peers.
It might have been for criminal mischief, it might have been for shoplifting. It might have been for possession of tobacco or for trespassing.
But now it is up to those students to determine the sentence.
“Hood rat.”
That’s what a person called Amber Wederski when she was 10 years old sitting at the bus stop. It’s the moment, Wederski said, that made her feel like she was different — the “bad seed” other kids were not allowed to see. She was “going nowhere fast.”
“I had teachers, I had guidance counselors, who didn’t believe in me,” she said. “They treated me different, so I always felt like I was different.”
Fourteen years later, Wederski is on track to graduating from Warner Pacific College with a bachelor’s degree in human development.
The eyes of the nation might be on President-Elect Donald Trump as he builds out his administration, but reformers holding out hope for progress might be wise to divert their gazes somewhere closer.
Last summer, Kameelah Davis-Spears was just one year out of homelessness. She’d found a house for herself and her four children in West Philadelphia using a Section 8 voucher. And, between food stamps and her job, doing inventory for $10.20 an hour, she was finally making it from one paycheck to the next.
Then, she began getting letters: The city Department of Human Services (DHS) was going after her for child support.
Amy Jones, director of Madison County Juvenile Court, says that over the past few years, the court has seen children brought in for disciplinary issues rather than delinquent offenses.
'Every red flag should have gone up' in the case of a suicidal transgender teen, national experts say. So far, the state-run facility has shed no light.
The Youth First Initiative wants to help end the use of youth prisons. The justice-advocacy group works from the premise that detaining minors—whether in youth facilities or in prisons—is not just a poorly executed practice; it is simply beyond repair. “This model of incarceration is broken—it does not work,” says Liz Ryan, the president and CEO of the Youth First Initiative. “It actually has never worked."
San Francisco city officials on Tuesday celebrated the official opening of a new recreation center for youth at Juvenile Hall.
The Merit Center, a pilot program that makes use of existing space at Juvenile Hall, will allow qualifying youth a chance to play foosball, ping pong and video games and participate in movie nights and other group activities, officials said.
When minors face criminal charges, their parents often face financial ones. That’s true throughout the country.
In some California Counties for instance, it can cost as much as $30 per-day for room and board for parents whose children are locked up inside juvenile hall. The bills don’t stop there. When kids are strapped with ankle monitors or assigned a probation officer, parents are often charged for that as well.
Over 5 million kids in the United States currently have or have had a parent in prison. That works out to about one in 14 American children—a majority of whom are under age 10. Broken down by state, children with incarcerated parents can represent 3 to 13 percent of the population, according to “A Shared Sentence,” a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The unusually intense stress that these children face has been well documented and studied. That’s mostly due to researchers’ emphasis on the parent-child relationship when analyzing incarcerated populations—and how little support is available for those left-behind children who are forced to stand by as their primary role models, caregivers, and providers are put behind bars.
But incarceration also affects a separate number of children who have been isolated from another profound relationship: They are the children with siblings in jail or prison—and much less is known about them. It isn’t even clear how many of them there are.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Governor Rick Scott announced that the number of juvenile arrests continued to decline in 2015-2016 according to the latest delinquency report released by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Statewide, juvenile arrests dropped another 7 percent in the last fiscal year, which resulted in a six-year decline of 37 percent. This year’s decrease is keeping in line with the drop in delinquency Florida has had each year, resulting in the lowest number of juvenile arrests in more than forty years.
“Some juvenile records are open to the public. Specifically, those who are over 14 and adjudicated delinquent of a felony have a public juvenile record. Moreover, once any portion of the juvenile record becomes public, then the entire record is public,” she said.
“That includes any non-felony portions of the record. Also, 12- and 13-year-olds who have been adjudicated of certain very serious felony offenses have a public juvenile record.”
HAMPTON ROADS, Va. (WAVY) -- 10 On your Side's Don Roberts has worked months and months to get an unprecedented look inside the juvenile justice system in Hampton Roads -- with the stories from the underage offenders themselves.
Finally, the City of Newport News agreed, but only if we do not show their faces. Don had a candid conversation with the juveniles about how they got behind bars and how they plan to change everything when it's time to get out.
A task force still wrangling over recommendations on juvenile strip-searches and shackling policies.
Michigan State University scholar Francisco Villarruel was selected by President Obama to serve on the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
