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All in Juvenile Justice News
DALLAS — In 2007, Chad Houser bought into a popular bistro in Dallas, and his dream of being a top chef and restaurant owner was fulfilled....Houser began volunteering with the Dallas County Juvenile Department and, in 2011, started a culinary program to train young men caught up in the system. It started as a series of Sunday night pop-up dinners at a top eatery, where participants learned about restaurant management and trained to serve the evening meal.
The Justice Department has told Youth Services Insider that the Office of Justice Programs will reduce the Office of Justice Programs’ workforce by nearly 200 positions by October of 2019, a move that could sap staff from the already-small division focused on federal juvenile justice policy.
SABILLASVILLE, Md. - Eight people have been charged following a riot at a Maryland juvenile detention facility that left eight staff members hurt.
AUSTIN — The number of Texas teens behind bars has dropped to its lowest point in decades, as the state yet again rethinks how to incarcerate its underage felons.
About half of the threats made in the days since the Parkland shooting have come from online, based on one estimate. Educators and law enforcement are faced with balancing school safety and justice – including First Amendment rights – when they investigate.
The Connecticut Juvenile Training School — the product of bid-rigging, outdated thinking and poor execution by the administration of Gov. John G. Rowland — closed Thursday as the last three young occupants left the sprawling detention center for home or private residential facilities.
A controversial new method for addressing juvenile crime stalled after a murder charge for one participant. But instead of backing off, prosecutors are doubling down.
King County wants to see all youth in our community happy, healthy, safe and thriving. Juvenile detention is a road block to this goal and generates urgency for us to do everything we can to build a holistic, trauma-informed juvenile justice system and work towards Zero Youth Detention.
Recognizing social media’s power to amplify gang disputes and relying on longstanding Illinois law that allows restricting the associations of those under court supervision, Cook County judges are clamping down on teen defendants’ social media postings.
WASHINGTON — Young black girls in D.C. are 30 times more likely to be arrested than white girls and boys of the same age, a new study shows.
A long-awaited, 72-bed home for youthful offenders convicted of serious crimes is complete and ready to open in Avoyelles Parish. A key feature of Louisiana's 15-year-old effort to overhaul its juvenile justice system, the Acadiana Center for Youth is intended to provide a therapeutic environment for kids in southwest Louisiana.
For the foreseeable future, though, the center is more likely to be used as an emergency shelter in a disaster, if anything at all, according to a spokesman for the Division of Administration.
Michigan is one of only five states that automatically prosecute all 17-year-old offenders as adults. Lawmakers introduced bills last year to raise the age of adult criminal liability to 18, but put the discussion on hold while a consulting firm conducted a cost study to determine the proposal’s financial impact. The study’s completion in early March has put the ball back in the legislature’s court. Although imperfect, the study can help policymakers with their efforts to enact the change, and Michigan should lose no time in joining the other states that have already done so.
As recently as 2005, the state of Virginia had eight centers like Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Facility, housing more than 1,300 delinquent youth. But by 2017, after a series of reforms, that number had shrunk to one.
The state can be held liable for teens raped in Michigan prisons, after the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled a state law that halted civil rights at the prison gate was unconstitutional.
In a 2-1 decision released Tuesday, a Court of Appeals panel threw out a 1999 law that said the state’s civil rights law, the Elliott Larson Civil Rights Act, doesn’t apply to prisoners.
...Put another way, in 2014, 3.1 percent of 18- to 23-year-olds in the Netherlands were tried as juveniles, while 2.1 percent of 16 and 17-year-olds were tried as adults. By 2016, only .2 percent of 16 and 17-year-olds were tried as adults while 4.7 percent of 18 to 23-year-olds were tried as juveniles.
Much of the legislative action is a response to Fight Club, published by the Times/Herald last year. The six-part series examined pervasive violence within juvenile lockups and residential programs — some of it instigated by workers and rewarded with treats — widespread sexual misconduct, medical neglect and lax personnel practices that encouraged the hiring of unqualified workers with unsavory pasts.
SEATTLE - For more than seven hours Monday protesters opposed to King County’s new juvenile courthouse and jail chained themselves together outside the construction site and blocked the heavy equipment from coming and going.
They yelled, chanted and held up signs. It marked the second time in weeks that protesters have blocked traffic in an effort to stop the nearly $200 million facility from being built. The protest is in its sixth year.
Alabama lawmakers are one step closer to overhauling the state’s juvenile justice system after the House passed a bill aimed at keeping low-level offenders out of detention. Thursday’s vote was 69-20 after more than three hours of heated debate and multiple amendments.
School district leaders in two Eastern North Carolina counties are partnering with local law enforcement to keep students who commit low-level offenses out of court.
Costly residential facilities are being replaced with effective community-based programs
