All in Ideas and Opinions

What Michigan Got Right, And Wrong, after Cornelius Fredericks’ Death

Author Daniel Kahneman in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” explains how two modes in our brains make decisions. One is fast/hot, an instinctive and emotional process often fueled by anger, fear or a survival response. The other is the slow/cool system, characterized by a calm and more conscious state of mind that is rational, thoughtful, deliberate and capable of making complex decisions. Both modes have their virtues and vices, depending on the circumstances in which a decision is being made.

Juvenile justice expert David Roush

Michigan’s responses to the death of Cornelius Frederick, a teen who was killed while being restrained by staff at a residential care facility with a history of licensing violations, were fast/hot ones.

CONTINUE READING on imprintnews.org

Dozens of Prosecutors and Youth Corrections Officials Call to Close All Youth Prisons

From the Youth Correction Leaders for Justice: As prosecutors, youth correctional administrators, and other concerned individuals, we have too often witnessed the failures of our country’s system of youth justice. The United States has long been the global leader in youth incarceration, locking up young people at a far higher rate than other industrialized nations, resulting in further trauma and fraying family and social ties, rather than improving children’s lives. By any measure, our overuse of incarceration for youth is ineffective, inefficient, and inhumane.

How to End Racial Bias in Juvenile Justice Risk-Needs Assessments

In a recent Child Trends report, we found that risk and needs assessments may misclassify youth of color as being high risk, which may perpetuate racial biases in the justice system.

That is a cause for concern. Black, Native American, and Latinx youth in the U.S. are already more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. As the use of risk and needs assessments increases, now is the time to develop strategies to address this systematic bias.

Differently. That Starts With Books Where They Are Celebrated

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.

Rise in incarceration discussed at MNSU

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.

Probation Must Be Reformed Nationwide By Focusing on Incentives

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.