All in Ideas and Opinions

Afterschool Alliance Addresses "School To Prison Pipeline"

Data from the Wyoming Afterschool Alliance indicates early intervention engages kids on a healthy path, and it saves money too by keeping kids out of detention, and out of prison as adults. It costs about $800 a year to have a child in an afterschool program. It costs $9,660 a year to care for a child when the Department of Family Services has to intervene.

Kentucky’s Complicated Struggle To Lock Up Fewer Kids On Minor Offenses

Politicians, school administrators and advocates in Kentucky all agree that children shouldn’t be locked up for behavior problems. But there’s little agreement on whether or how to stop the practice.

Kentucky put more kids in detention in 2014 for non-criminal charges than any state except Washington, according to the most recent statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. At least half the states in the U.S. prohibit locking up children for noncriminal offenses. Even when states allow the practice, they use it rarely, except in a handful of states – Kentucky among them.

New Data Powers Progress for Teens, Also Creates Problems, Experts Say at Conference

WASHINGTON — Data from growing research have stormed into the juvenile justice and child welfare fields over the past two decades, providing more raw material to help troubled teens than ever before. But turning that information wave into better outcomes for children — and convincing practitioners within established systems to adopt new approaches — still requires some prodding and commitment to adopting these findings, according to judges, case workers, academics and advocates for children.

WHAT TO TAKEAWAY FROM ORANGE COUNTY’S (FL) HIGH JUVENILE ARREST RATE

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida, and black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. As part of the final installment of Young & Arrested, 90.7’s Renata Sago discusses what’s next for juvenile justice in Orange County and what we can take away from the voices in the series.

A BOY IN PRISON BY AGE FOURTEEN

According to Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), one sliver of Pine Hills has Florida’s highest volume of juvenile arrests. Though agency data show that juvenile arrests statewide are at a forty-year low, Orange County has maintained the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida for the past three consecutive years. The majority of those arrests are for crimes charged as felonies. Demographically speaking, black boys between ages twelve and sixteen comprise the majority of those arrests.