Missing data is missing people. Absent complete and accurate data, policies to improve the lives of Michiganders may not reach those who are not counted. The issues with data access, consistency, integrity, and transparency span across issue areas, but of particular concern is the prevalence of these data problems in Michigan’s adult and youth criminal justice systems.

But this revolutionary moment is inviting us to be a part of the solution.

Community members of the Central District and beyond have been trying to prevent the construction — and now opening — of the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center, which is widely known as the youth jail, since King County voters approved a property tax increase in 2012 to pay for it.

I curated the Rising Voices Library in partnership with Scholastic in order to address an enduring problem: Young men of color do not see their own lives and backgrounds reflected in positive ways in the authentic text they read in their classrooms. Comprised of two copies of 25 titles per grade level from K-5 for a total of 300 books, each of them an inspiring narrative featuring a protagonist who is a man or a young man of color, Rising Voices is a landmark in the movement for culturally relevant curricula.

Thanks, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, for signing legislation that raises to age 18 the jurisdiction of juvenile courts. This change will protect more of Michigan’s young people by not only keeping them out of the adult system but also by allowing them to receive age-appropriate and rehabilitative services that will provide a second chance for the many youths charged with minor offenses.

The Wiecking Center auditorium was packed Thursday afternoon for speaker Emily Baxter’s talk entitled “We are all criminals”.

Baxter started her talk with a powerful statistic – one in four people in the U.S. have a criminal record. But Baxter is a firm believer that four in four people have a criminal history, meaning everyone has taken something that isn’t theirs. Someone has drunk underage or done illegal drugs. Someone has broken even the smallest of laws, and the only reason they are not in the criminal justice system is because they “have the luxury to forget,” as stated by Baxter.

More than 40 states currently have a felony murder law, which juvenile justice advocates believe unfairly impacts young people. Some lawmakers in states such as Illinois and California have sought to enact reform.

With close to half of delinquency cases resulting in probation, it is the most common disposition a juvenile can receive. Appropriately, probation is now the focus of a recent report by juvenile justice advocates. The report uses a resolution passed by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in 2017 to “advocate for empirically supported juvenile probation reform nationwide” and provides jurisdictions with practical suggestions on how to revise policies so that more young people can be successful on probation.

In this op-ed, Juvenile Law Center's Jessica Feierman and Girls for Gender Equity's Ashley Sawyer talk about the systemic punishment and arrest of Black girls who speak out about discrimination.