Can Ohio’s Approach to School Truancy Succeed While Avoiding Justice System Contact?

Over the past several decades, researchers have studied and debated the complex pathway between school truancy, delinquency and involvement with the adult criminal justice system. While there is no direct link between school truancy and criminal behaviors, truancy is often a symptom of complex issues including concerns around violence, mental health, substance use in the home, and homelessness, in addition to other difficulties that are not easily addressed.

Prisons Need ‘Child-Friendly’ Facilities for Incarcerated Parents: Study

Should parents who are locked up also be locked away from their kids?

If the answer is “no,” then how much time should incarcerated parents be permitted to have with their children—and how could they use that time?

With over one million parents behind bars, the question is critical for the long-term health of their children—estimated at between 1.5 million and 2.3 million, according to a recent study published in the Florida Law Review.

Plan to phase out pepper spray this year at L.A.'s juvenile halls hits a potential snag

When Los Angeles County leaders voted unanimously in February to ban the use of pepper spray in its juvenile detention facilities, officials were tasked with phasing out the chemical agent by the end of the year.

But on Tuesday, the head of the county’s Probation Department — which runs juvenile detention facilities — told the Board of Supervisors that her agency will need more time.

Pay raises on the horizon as Texas prisons continue to deal with staffing shortages

Then-union spokesman Lance Lowry fretted in fall 2017 about a “mass exodus” in the state’s prison system, with an officer turnover rate so high that nearly 1 in 3 guards fled the agency over the prior year.

Little has changed since — and the vacancy rate is ticking up, as critical positions sit unfilled both Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s 104 adult prisons and at the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s five youth prisons.