Tagged With "Ben David New Hanover County DA"
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There’s a good reason this police trainer tells new recruits that they are racist (washingtonpost.com)
(Image Credit: Michael Schlosser, director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, offers new recruits training on interactions with minority communities. (L. Brian Stauffer) Michael Schlosser wants new police officers to understand one thing before they go out in the field: They’re influenced by racial bias. This strategy is a major component of a three-year-old diversity education course at the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, where officers...
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These Black Lives Matters protesters planned a march. The police threw them a cookout instead.
Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post just posted an inspiring story with a message of hope for communities struggling with tension between police and community members: Activist A.J. Bohannon had organized more than 1,000 Black Lives Matters protesters to march the streets of Wichita on Sunday. But then, days before, he received a call from the new police chief with a different idea. Instead of having an event that drew a hard line between protester and police, why not bring them all...
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Through Restorative Community Meetings, Juveniles Repair Harm And Avoid Lockup [WitnessLA.com]
In a new report , the non-profit Impact Justice explored the effects of a program in Alameda County that employs restorative justice techniques to keep juveniles out of lockup. Community Works West’s Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC) program diverts more than 100 young people away from the juvenile justice system each year, according to the report. The program brings the youth—supported by their family and community—face to face with their crime victims to engage in a dialogue to...
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Two New Grant Opportunities for Youth Development and Diversion Services
In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.
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Want to Keep Kids Out of Foster Care? Vote for Gentler Criminal Justice Laws [PSMag.com]
It’s well-established that a prison sentence doesn’t just impact the individual sent behind bars; it affects the family too. Now, a new study hints at yet another path through which harsh criminal justice laws, including policies that send many to prison, hurt families and kids. Children living in states that have “extensive and punitive criminal justice systems” are more likely to be placed in foster care, the study finds. Children living in states that have “broad and generous welfare...
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Why Silicon Valley is teaming up with San Quentin to train young people to code (usatoday.com)
Inside an aging brick facility ringed by a chain-link fence and agricultural fields, 14 young people convicted of violent crimes are trying to program a better future for themselves. For the past two months they’ve been learning to write code through a first-of-its-kind pilot program at the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo, California, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles. They’re looking to break that streets-to-prison cycle by picking up new skills – JavaScript, HTML,...
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Why We Need to Root for the Philadelphia Eagles
Next week the Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl, and while some of us already have plans to cheer them on from our living rooms, there is another opportunity for us to show them our support. Eagles players and coach Jeffrey Lurie are waging a battle to ensure criminal justice reform and bringing an end to racial inequality. These issues are at the heart of much of our community trauma, and we need to uplift the work of the Eagles to help our communities heal. The New York Times...
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Wisconsin to Close 2 Juvenile Detention Centers Dogged by Abuse Charges [jjie.org]
Reform advocates declared victory today after Wisconsin agreed to shutter two troubled detention centers and take steps advocates hope will drag its juvenile justice system into the 21st century. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced today that his administration will close the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and the Copper Lake School for Girls and build at least five new detention centers that will “align with nationally recognized best practices.” The two correctional facilities had become...
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Youth in Five Cities Cite Fear as Major Barrier to Wellness [BU.edu]
Youth of color represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. youth population and make up the majority of young people in about half of the country’s 100 largest U.S. cities. According to new research by the Center for Promise , the research institute of America’s Promise Alliance , fear, along with inequitable access to social supports, opportunities and experiences essential for healthy development, place this group at increased risk for poor health outcomes. [For more of this story go...
Ask the Community
Looking for Juvenile Justice Curriculum
Hi All, I'm new to this. I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I teach a life skills class in a small juvenile detention facility and would love to incorporate resilience and ACES into my lesson plans. Does anyone have suggestions of a curriculum I could use with my youth to teach these things? So far I've looked a little bit at Why Try and Seeking Safety but I am definitely open to other suggestions. Thanks!
Calendar Event
2018 National Conference on Juvenile Justice (San Diego)
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7 Ways to Help a Child Deal with Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress feels awful. Thankfully, there are small things we can all do to help relax a hyperaroused nervous system.
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A Baby Court Offers Hope for Families [Kristof.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
As a family court judge in Flint, Michigan, I see poverty flood my courtroom in a vicious cycle of cases in dependency, delinquency, criminality, and then back to dependency. The mantra in family court is that no one should lose their kids because they’re poor. The sad reality is that this happens all too often when generational poverty creates what Nicholas Kristof calls a “broken class.” Many times it falls to the courts to fix families. It would be nice if it were easy. But often courts...
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A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff
A Trauma Primer for Juvenile Probation and Juvenile Detention Staff August 12, 2015 Juvenile justice probation and detention workers play an important role in helping system-involved youth and families navigate justice and social service...
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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...
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Ambitious New Report Says It’s Time To Rethink The Nation’s Juvenile Probation Systems [witnessla.com]
For more than a decade, the nation’s juvenile justice systems have steadily cut back on unnecessary use of incarceration for young people. The reduction in the use of youth lock-ups have been good for kids and for public safety. Reforms that resulted in incarcerating fewer kids, statistically improve the chances of success for youth when they become adults, while also corresponding with the steady decline in juvenile crime during the same period. Yet, according to an important new report...
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An Unusual New Program Seeks to Cut Urban Crime by Pushing Gang Members into College [psmag.com]
This story was produced in collaboration with the Hechinger Report . When Matt Jackson's girlfriend was killed in gang crossfire in 2014, leaving him a single father to a three-year-old girl, he knew it was time to do something different with his life.* Jackson, who grew up surrounded by drugs and violence in Boston's South End neighborhood, had been getting into trouble since he was a kid. Locked up at 14 for possessing crack cocaine, he spent what might have been his college years in...
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Arts Seen As Crucial to Healing Youth, Changing the Juvenile Justice System [jjie.org]
LOS ANGELES — For Jordan, growing up in Jamaica, Queens in New York City left much to be desired. One of the few places he could go after school were the youth arts programs in his neighborhood. “It was the thing to do after school instead of being outside or doing something that could possibly get you in trouble,” he said. One of the programs Jordan was in is Neighborhood Opportunity Networks , or NeON Arts . It’s part of New York City’s Department of Probation and is managed by Carnegie...
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As Newsom rethinks juvenile justice, California reconsiders prison for kids (calmatters.org)
Though it’s not on the parchment, Moreno, 21, earned his Johanna Boss High School diploma over the past two years at a state prison for juveniles in Stockton. And as one of fewer than 800 remaining youths in the custody of the soon-to-be-shuttered juvenile division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he said, that accomplishment—behind razor wire—was more than just a step toward a future job or a rite of passage. “Being the first one [in the family] to graduate,”...
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Association of Childhood History of Parental Incarceration and Juvenile Justice Involvement With Mental Health in Early Adulthood (JAMA Open Access)
Question Is a childhood history of parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement associated with mental health conditions in early adulthood? Findings In this nationally representative cross-sectional study, young adults with a history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement reported more mental health conditions compared with peers with no justice system exposure during childhood. Meaning Parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement may be...
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Better Solutions for Youth With Mental Health Needs in the Juvenile Justice System
An estimated 70 percent of youth involved in the justice system have a diagnosable mental health disorder. The Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Collaborative for Change has released a new report which discusses challenges with inadequate...
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Burnout Risk for In-Prison Educators Could Jeopardize Programs for Incarcerated Students
Sustaining Futures will strengthen education programs for incarcerated individuals by training California Community College faculty and staff on trauma and resilience.
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California Ends Practice of Billing Parents for Kids in Detention [themarshallproject.org]
Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed into law on Wednesday a sweeping package of criminal justice reform bills including a ban on the practice of billing parents for their children’s incarceration, which had been prevalent statewide for decades and was the subject of a Marshall Project investigation earlier this year. The new law — introduced by two Democratic state senators from the Los Angeles area, Holly Mitchell and Ricardo Lara, and approved by the legislature on Sept. 6 — prohibits...
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California Legislature Passes Bill Setting Juvenile Justice Minimum Age at 12 [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
A bill that would largely exclude California youth under the age of 12 from prosecution is now headed to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) after passing out of both chambers of the state legislature. Senate Bill 439 would direct counties to seek alternatives to the juvenile justice system for children 11 and younger. State Senator Holly Mitchell (D), a co-sponsor of the legislation, hopes that the state could use a new pot of state money aimed at diverting young people from the justice system...
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California would virtually eliminate money bail under proposed legislation (sacbee.com)
California lawmakers have unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul pretrial release in the state that could virtually eliminate the use of money bail. Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, introduced legislation last December to change a system they argue unfairly punishes the poor by keeping them stuck in custody if they cannot afford expensive bail rates. Updated with new details last Friday, the proposal envisions instead a system of risk assessment to...
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Can a nonprofit turn around a school in a juvenile detention facility? (hechingerreport.org)
New Orleans: As recently as a decade ago, the Youth Study Center would have been unlikely to attract an educational pioneer to their juvenile detention facility. The roughly 40 teenagers held in the flood-damaged center rarely made it to class because they were often on lockdown 23 hours a day. The staff had a reputation for incompetence. The building itself was plagued with bugs and mold. But this summer, the Orleans Parish School Board signed over operations of the school to the national...
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Can New Zeland Provide the U.S. With a Model for Juvenile Justice Reform [psmag.com]
Skyrocketing incarceration rates, over-representation of ethnic minorities, a fixation on punishment rather than rehabilitation—this isn't describing the modern criminal justice system in the United States. It's New Zealand's in the 1980s. After watching its criminal justice system devour six times more indigenous Maori youth than their white counterparts, New Zealand passed the Children's and Young People's Well-Being Act in 1989. The legislation, which limited police power to arrest youth...
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Charging Youth as Adults has Public Health Impact, Report Says (socialjusticesolutions.org) 56 page report
Advocates in California say that for too long the hazardous health consequences of incarcerating juveniles in the state’s justice system have been obscured by overly punitive rhetoric around public safety. The authors describe a court process that offers few opportunities for youth to deal with childhood trauma that often leads to involvement with the justice system. When it comes to transfers of youth to the adult system, racial disparities are widespread . As a result, they say, high rates...
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Childhood Trauma and Its Effects: Implications for Police
This is important information regarding childhood trauma and policing. Includes reference for:
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County staff unveils plan for Juvenile Resource Center [ElkhardTruth.com]
A new plan unveiled by Elkhart County staff Wednesday calls for a major reconfiguration in how children, particularly those with potential health issues, should be treated in the county’s juvenile justice system. The project calls for building a Juvenile Resource Center, which would screen and assess youth accused of delinquency to determine the most appropriate intervention. Those actions could include anything from requiring mental health treatment to detention. The goal, however, is to...
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Court Resources
7 Common Characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts Source: Gains Center, SAMHSA Description: Identifies seven common characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts (JMHCs) as part of a National Institute of Justice – funded study,...
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COVID-19 Risks Prompt Some California Counties to Ease Jail Populations [chcf.org]
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Care Foundation, April 24, 2020 Many county correctional facilities throughout California are reducing their teeming populations to prevent large-scale COVID-19 outbreaks. The dorm rooms, dining halls, and recreation areas in many of these institutions are breeding grounds for spreading the virus, experts say. People have been complaining for weeks that inmates don’t have hand sanitizer or equipment like masks to protect themselves and that cramped...
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Credible Messengers Help Turn Former Convicts into Leaders (nationswell.com)
The key to this program is an initiative called the credible messenger approach to restorative justice. It pairs at-risk and justice-involved youth, who are individuals who’ve been involved with the criminal system, with people who have had comparable life experiences, such as ex-convicts or ex-gang members. “When you think of a credible messenger, you think of those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” says Jason Clark, the program manager at King County Credible Messengers...
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Dayonn Davis Stole a Pair of Nikes. He’s Going to Prison for 5 Years. Why? [JJIE.org]
This column was originally written for VOXatl.com . Dayonn Davis was 15 when he committed a crime that would get him tried in court as an adult. A Facebook sale of a pair of Oreo Nikes, priced at around $100, went sour when the Columbus, Georgia teen attempted to steal them. Without the knowledge of Davis, a friend pulled out a pistol and everybody ran. Reluctantly, Davis finally gave up the name of his armed friend, but the victim could not pick him out of a lineup. For that 2016 crime,...
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Dream Beyond Bars report offers a new way to study the effects of youth incarceration [Oakland North]
About two years ago, when Xochtil Larios was in Alameda County Juvenile Hall in San Leandro, she decided to do more than just participate in classes and programs. “I didn’t feel like it was enough for me. I felt like the girls in there deserved better,” she said. During a session on vision boarding, Larios met staff members from Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), an Oakland nonprofit that works to empower young people affected by the criminal justice system. At CURYJ,...
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Early, Individualized Interventions Key to Reentry Success, Report Says [JJIE.org]
Former offenders need timely, individualized reentry paths that focus on career development, a new report by ICF International says. Too often, the hundreds of thousands of people returning from prison each year are unable to find employment, a situation compounded by trouble securing housing, health care and transportation — all factors that increase the likelihood of recidivism. “All they’ve got is a criminal record. That’s all anyone can see,” said Brent Orrell, a family and economic...
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Early Investments in Children can Prevent Costly Lifetime of Effects of Damage
Editorial in the New Mexico Politics. Dr. George Davis, former director of the New Mexico Juvenile Justice System and CYFD talks about how children end up in the criminal system. "Within the first five years of life, the trajectory is set for the most important skills a person will ever possess — such fundamental traits as the capacity for attachment and empathy, the ability to self-regulate and to be calmed, and the tendency to seek primary reward from contact with other humans rather than...
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Effort to Reduce School-Based Arrests Benefits Nearly 15,000 Additional Students This Year in Connecticut (cmhnetwork.org)
Eighteen Connecticut schools in six districts are participating in the Connecticut School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI) during the 2016-17 school year bringing the total number of schools served by SBDI to 37. SBDI is a school level intervention designed to prevent youth from entering the juvenile justice system by connecting students to community-based mental health services as an alternative to arrest. Among schools participating since 2010, the average reduction in court referrals...
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Ex-schools chief Deasy's next step: build alternative juvenile prisons (latimes.com)
John Deasy, the controversial former superintendent who led the Los Angeles Unified School District for three-and-a-half turbulent years, is embarking on a new venture that could prove just as challenging: keeping juvenile offenders from returning to jail. Deasy wants to do that by opening alternative juvenile prisons in Los Angeles and Alameda counties that could include activities such as yoga, meditation, art, counseling, athletics and education. His goal is to reduce recidivism by 50%.
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GENDER & TRAUMA Somatic Interventions for Girls in Juvenile Justice: Implications for Policy and Practice (40 pages - Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality)
The impact of gender on the experience of trauma is less widely discussed, though it is significant in scope. In multiple studies, girls have reported higher rates of adverse childhood experiences than boys in all categories, especially girls in the juvenile justice system. Girls report sexual abuse at particularly disproportionate levels and are more likely than boys to experience such violence within intimate relationships. Girls are also at greater risk of developing negative mental...
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Getting Therapy Instead of Serving Time [TheAtlantic.com]
Children as young as 13 can be tried in adult criminal court for serious crimes in New York state. But instead of redirecting troubled kids, prison hardens them. That’s why the New York Foundling, a private children’s-advocacy organization, offers an alternative, Families Rising , a diversionary option that mandates family therapy in exchange for delayed sentencing and avoiding a criminal record entirely if the program is completed successfully. The program also costs significantly less than...
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Global Youth Justice Trainings Teen/Student/Youth/Peer Court and Peer Jury (globalyouthjustice.org)
Description: Global Youth Justice, Inc. champions 1,700+ volunteer-driven youth justice and juvenile justice diversion programs called Teen/Youth/Student/Peer Court and Peer Jury on 4-Continents, making it the most replicated juvenile/youth justice program around the globe. And, adults and youth from hundreds of additional communities around the globe are in various stages of implementing one of these rapidly expanding affordable youth-led juvenile justice and youth justice diversion...
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Graduations, non-linear paths, & the importance of getting started
With graduation season upon us, I have been thinking a lot about one of my favorite graduation speeches. It’s the speech that Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, gave in 2014 at Dartmouth College. She references the typical expected advice from a graduation speech: “Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. .." And then she says, “I think that’s crap.”
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Here’s another thing about millennials – they get in less trouble with the police [Sacramento Bee]
Members of the millennial generation live with their parents more, have less sexual interaction and start families later than prior generations. Turns out they also got in less trouble with the law as teenagers. On average, 5 percent of Californians born between 1982 to 2004 were arrested while younger than the age of 18, according to a new report by the national Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit. That compares with 11 percent of those born between 1943 and 1960 and 8...
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Holding Evil Accountable
When I worked in juvenile probation there were times youth were labeled with the diagnosis BAD. They were just bad kids. There are even maximum security juvenile detention centers for kids with the BAD diagnosis. Kids who seem to have been born evil. As a criminal justice academician, I have read details of some of the most hideous crimes ever committed. I have a PhD in criminal justice. Currently I teach criminal justice to undergraduate students eager to begin their careers in...
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Homelessness Leads to Justice System and Vice Versa, New Report Details [JJIE.org]
You’re 16, homeless and sleeping on a park bench when police grab you at 3 in the morning. Vagrancy, trespassing or a host of minor offenses send you tumbling into the juvenile justice system. Or you’re 16, do something stupid with marijuana, get caught trespassing, missing curfews or skipping school. You have a home but no true family support system, and suddenly, with a criminal record, nobody’s hiring, school expelled you and your family tossed you out of the house. You too wind up...
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How Mass Incarceration Pushes Black Children Further Behind in School [TheAtlantic.com]
In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the closing remarks at the March on Washington. More than 200,000 people gathered to cast a national spotlight on and mobilize resistance to Jim Crow, racist laws and policies that disenfranchised black Americans and mandated segregated housing, schools, and employment. Today, more than 50 years later, remnants of Jim Crow segregation persist in the form of mass incarceration —the imprisonment of millions of Americans, overwhelmingly...
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How New York City Achieved an Historic Drop in Youth Detention Admissions [jjie.org]
This year has been one of the most transformative years in history for New York’s juvenile justice system. Just a month after one of New York’s most groundbreaking juvenile justice reforms, Raise the Age, became a reality, New York City took a wrecking ball to the decades-old Spofford Juvenile Detention Centers in the Bronx. For too long, Spofford served as a symbol of misguided approaches to juvenile delinquency. The demolition of Spofford along with the implementation of Raise the Age...