All in Juvenile Justice News
State and national activists meeting in Oxnard on Friday lauded local efforts to reduce youth crime and steer young people away from juvenile detention, but they concurred with officials that more needs to be done.
New report documents urgent need to replace youth prisons with rehabilitation-focused alternatives
Juvenile justice advocates at this two-day conference call the statistics alarming. In New Jersey, African-Americans and Latinos make up 87 percent of the juveniles “waived up” or tried as adults for certain crimes if a county prosecutor requests it and a judge approves it. If convicted, those juveniles serve sentences in adult prisons.
In 2007 Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson joined forces with the NYRPto transform the Baisley Park Community Garden into theCurtis “50 Cent” Jackson Community Garden. The space features a children’s learning garden, vegetable plots and a patio area. Recently this space has also started providing an alternative-to-detention program for troubled youths.
“They can tell if you care or if you don’t.”
A lot of progress has been made in Illinois, said Elizabeth Clarke, director at the Juvenile Justice Initiative, including a recent law requiring that children under age 15 have a lawyer present when they are questioned by police, and that those sessions are videotaped. And according to Clarke, the number of juveniles incarcerated in the state has declined overall.
The Harris County Juvenile Detention Center has kicked into "emergency staffing" mode given the 250-capacity detention center was housing 295 kids as of September 22.
While it’s certain that some Latino youth — born in the United States or not — are in the juvenile justice system across California, it is anyone’s guess how many and how their journey through the system affects them.
In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, Elvis topped the charts with “All Shook Up,” and Missouri lawmakers wrote the state’s juvenile code.
The system’s basic structure hasn’t changed in 60 years. And in 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice raised questions about how well that structure protects the rights of the kids who come into the system.
Three-year pilot program will give 18- to 21-year-olds chance to access educational, support services.
Even though the year began with strong bipartisan support for federal sentencing reform, no major changes to the criminal justice system have made it out of Congress thanks to a combination of legislative gridlock, election-year rhetoric about rising crime in some cities, and Republican reluctance to hand President Obama a major victory.
But on Thursday, the House of Representatives quietly — and overwhelmingly — passed what might be the most significant justice reform measure to reach Obama in his tenure.
Thirteen states have not imposed a minimum age for prosecuting a child as an adult, leaving eight-, nine-, and ten-year-old children vulnerable to extreme punishment, trauma, and abuse within adult jails and prisons.
The House education committee unanimously backed a bill to change policies and practices governing juvenile-justice and at-risk youth and reported it favorably to the full House of Representatives for consideration.
NEW YORK — As Gynnya McMillen coughed and gasped for air, shaking in a seizure while taking her final breaths, a Kentucky juvenile detention youth worker stood outside her isolation cell watching, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the 16-year-old’s estate.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — When Dequan Jackson had his only brush with the law, at 13, he tried to do everything right.
Charged with battery for banging into a teacher while horsing around in a hallway, he pleaded guilty with the promise that after one year of successful probation, the conviction would be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Area officials mixed on juvenile justice changes
Juvenile justice reform advocates can spread their message further if they carefully guide their audience to an understanding of adolescent development and the justice system, researchers say.
Prosecutors across Michigan are fighting to uphold sentences for most of the 350-plus prison inmates now serving mandatory life terms for crimes they committed as juveniles. Their stance is in apparent defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court directive this year that courts across the nation are supposed to reduce life sentences for young offenders except in only “rare” cases.
There are an estimated 57,000 youth in juvenile detention and correctional facilities on any given day, with hundreds of thousands more on probation. The Williams Institute estimates that half of LGBTQ youth in the United States are “at risk” of being arrested or entering juvenile and criminal justice systems.
There are questions about how the South Bend, Indiana Juvenile Justice Center is being maintained. This comes as county leaders are working on next year’s budget.
Departments have been asked to cut their budgets by 3 percent, but the judge in charge of the JJC says there are too many unfunded maintenance issues in his building that need to be addressed.
