The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/juvenile-justice/)
To mark Father’s Day on Sunday, The Beat Within, a San Francisco-based prison writing workshop, asked inmates of juvenile detention facilities to “write the letter you always wanted (or maybe never wanted) to write” to their Dads. Here’s a first sampling of the letters they produced.
Despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings, nearly three dozen inmates in Colorado are behind bars for terms of 50 years or more. Critics say the high court may have to consider the issue again.
New York City ‘violence interruptors’ now use social media to intervene when online conflicts threaten to spill over into violence. Mike Perry and Samuel Jackson tell Crime Report editor Stephen Handelman how they do it in the latest episode of “Criminal Justice Matters.”
Los Angeles police and social workers believed the young girls picked up as prostitutes could best be helped through the juvenile court system. Then they realized little would change until they went after the traffickers who had made L.A. County one of the top child sex-trafficking hubs in the U.S.
The lack of state-enforced standards represents a “missed opportunity” for helping youth avoid the harmful lifetime consequences of involvement with the justice system, according to a report released May 31 by Strategies for Youth, Inc., a Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit.
Over the past decade, at least seven states have raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18, and today most states set it there. New York is phasing in a raising of the age, and at least three states are considering bills to raise the age.
A National Juvenile Defender Center report finds “large discrepancies” across the U.S. in the guidelines and procedures used to determine juveniles’ access to a lawyer. In the report, entitled, “Access Denied,” it calls on state authorities to “recognize interrogation as a critical stage of juvenile proceedings requiring a publicly funded defense lawyer to protect children from potential abuses of authority.”
As the landmark Supreme Court ruling, “In re Gault,” marks its 50th anniversary this week, advocates reflect on how it transformed the juvenile justice system—and what remains to be done.
The move comes as officials push to address crime on multiple fronts with a focus on auto thefts and carjackings. “The best chance we have to keep an offender out of prison is to properly use the juvenile justice system,” said Police Chief Edward Flynn.
A photographer’s search for answers about the death of a troubled young man gives him a lesson in the dysfunctions of America’s juvenile justice system.