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PACEs in Youth Justice

Discussion of Transition and Reentry issues of out of home (treatment, detention, sheltered, etc.) youth back to their families and communities. Frequently these youth have fallen behind in their schooling, have reduced motivation, and lack skills to navigate requirements to successfully re-enter school programs or even to move ahead with their dreams.

Advocates Hope NY Court Ruling on Warrants for Foster Youth Leads to Reform [jjie.org]

 

NEW YORK — Christina Young remembers the day the cops came for her at school.

She was 15 years old — a sophomore at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business in lower Manhattan. She and four of her friends were sitting together at a table in the school’s large and chaotic cafeteria. It was lunch time but they weren’t eating. They didn’t like eating lunch at school. They didn’t have a reason why really, they just didn’t like to. Instead they used the time to hang out, and listen to music on her friends iPod.

She was playing with that iPod when the School Resource Officers walked in. The officers weren’t an uncommon presence in the cafeteria, she remembers.

“Someone in that cafeteria was always doing something that you weren’t supposed to do,” Young said.

When they showed up, the students went on high alert wondering who the officers were coming for this time.

But that day, Young didn’t have to wonder. When they walked in, she knew it was for her.

As she watched them ask the man who scanned their ID cards when they entered the cafeteria to point out their target she thought to herself that maybe they were there for the group of rowdy boys who had already been asked multiple times to quiet down. But then the employee at the manning the identification station pointed at her and the officers started to walk in her direction. Her heart sank.

[To read more of this article, please click here.]

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