Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union just released an extensive report, Growing Up Locked Down – Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons across the United States, provides further evidence about the misfit of holding youth in adult facilities. While not all youth end up in solitary confinement while in an...
Youth Justice
The US Senate takes up the call for Reform of the School to Prison Pipeline
The evidence is clear – frequent school suspensions place youth at greater risk of a host of “rotten outcomes”, not the least of which is involvement in the juvenile or criminal justice system. Noting that this is a nationwide problem, Senator Dick Durbin held a hearing last Wednesday of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the...
Finding Creative Ways to Invest in the Future – Will Social Impact Bonds Work for the Justice System?
Pressure to direct government funding toward smart, effective initiatives may be why a new type of bond, social impact bonds, are becoming financing options for social programs. Early initiatives using social impact bonds – essentially borrowing funds to pay for savings later – have been used in other areas, but now may be making their...
Today is Human Rights Day – is the conservative call for prison reform real?
Today is Human Rights Day, perhaps a good day to reflect on the fact that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Fortunately, more and more conservatives are discovering what progressives (and by the way what juvenile justice advocates have known for along time), that investing in “get tough on crime”...
Crossover Youth: What can we learn about why some kids in the child welfare system end up in the delinquency system? And, some don’t?
New research led by Joseph P. Ryan at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through its Models for Change initiative, affirms (not surprisingly) that the likelihood of future delinquency involvement is higher for youth who were referred to the child protective...
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