October 31, 2016
Benjamin Chambers

Member and Fellow News

• Amir Whitaker of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Florida office (an NJJN member) co-authored a piece with actor Jesse Williams for TIME magazine on the school-to-prison pipeline for children of color. See "Jesse Williams and Amir Whitaker: Brown v. Board of Education Is a Broken Promise," TIME, Oct. 7, 2016.

• Carmen Perez -- an alum of our Youth Justice Leadership Institute and winner of this year's Beth Arnovits Gutsy Advocate for Youth Award, was profiled here: “Carmen Perez Interview: A Fearless Activist Gathering the People for Justice,” Get Far Magazine, August 16, 2016.

• The work of Kelly Gilbreth, also an alum of our Youth Justice Leadership Institute, was recognized with the 2016 Jeanne Gauna Social Justice Spirit Award. The award is given to uplift and celebrate as leaders women who have "worked tirelessly and wisely, guarding and winning social/political/economic/environmental/spiritual and cultural justice for women, families and communities." 

• Youth Justice Leadership Institute alums Jeree Thomas (winner of our inaugural Youth Justice Emerging Leader Award) and Maheen Kaleem published "Girls' Justice Day! Why Now is the Time to Act for Justice-Involved Girls," Campaign for Youth Justice blog, Sept. 30, 2016. 

• Jody Owens -- alum of NJJN's Youth Justice Leadership Institute, member of NJJN, co-chair of NJJN's Advisory Committee, and managing attorney of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Missisippi office (an NJJN member organization) -- was interviewed about the closing of the notorious Walnut Grove Prison in Mississippi, once home to some of the worst abuses of youth in confinement in recent times. (Follow the link and scroll to the second item down.)

• Ricky Watson, a juvenile defender and current fellow in NJJN's Youth Justice Leadership Institute, was profiled in "Citizen Green: Guilford court system produces reformer," by Jordan Green, Triad City Beat,Sept. 28, 2016. Watson also co-directs the Youth Justice Project at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, an NJJN organizational member.

• Ebony Howard, managing attorney at Southern Poverty Law Center's Alabama office (an NJJN member), was quoted in "Task force looks at juvenile justice costs, outcomes," DecaturDaily.com, Sept. 27, 2016. Howard is a 2016 fellow in NJJN's Youth Justice Leadership Institute. 

• NJJN member, the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliiance, published an issue brief on LGBTQ youth and girls as well as one advocating for community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, titled, "People Are More Important than Buildings." 

• The Youth Justice Project  (YJP) at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (an NJJN organizational member) has produced a series of "Racial Equity Report Cards," which use publicly available data "to provide a snapshot of the racial disproportionalities that exist in a community’s public education and juvenile justice systems." Follow the link to see YJP's report card for North Carolina (and similar report cards for every school district in the state).  

• WNYC did a series of reports around youth in adult prison, all of which can be found here. Kathy Wright of the New Jersey Parents Caucus (NJPC), member of NJJN, and former Youth Justice Leadership Instutute fellow, was a crucial source. NJPC's data report last year on NJ kids in the adult system guided WNYC's own data analysis, and some of the NJPC's youth caucus members were interviewed for the series.  

• The Just Children program of the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia (an NJJN member), is quoted in "Building Community Alternatives to Virginia’s Juvenile Justice System," Catherine Komp, NPR, Sept. 22, 2016. 

Resources

• "Total Youth Arrests for Violent Crime Still Falling Nationwide," Jeffrey A. Butts (John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation: Databits fact sheet, Sept. 27, 2016). See also, "Racial Disparities Persist in Juvenile Court Placements," Jeffrey A. Butts (John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation: Databits fact sheet, Oct. 24, 2016).

• "The Future of Youth Justice: A Community-Based Alternative to the Youth Prison Model" recommends actions to replace the youth prison model. It advocates for a common-sense, bipartisan approach to halt the heavy reliance on incarcerating young people. It makes the case for a continuum of community-based programs and, for the few youth who require secure confinement, smaller homelike facilities that prioritize age-appropriate rehabilitation. The report was written by Patrick McCarthy, president and chief executive officer of the Annie E. Casey Foundation; Miriam Shark, a former associate director at the Foundation; and Vincent Schiraldi, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Both McCarthy and Schiraldi were once youth correctional administrators.

• "New Information About the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Up to Nine in Ten Juvenile Justice-Involved Youth Have Been Disciplined in School," Angela Irvine and Aishatu Yusuf, Impact Justice, Aug. 30, 2016.
• INFOGRAPHIC: "The Path from School Suspension to Youth Incarceration in California," Impact Justice. Shows that "Black boys who have been suspended are 180 times more likely to enter the California juvenile justice system than one White girl who has never been suspended."

• INFOGRAPHIC: The Harms of Juvenile Detention, National Juvenile Defender Center, October 2016.

• "Promoting Positive Development: The Critical Need to Reform Youth Probation Orders," National Juvenile Defender Center issue brief, Oct. 2016. 

• VIDEO: "What You Invest In Grows" is a #SchoolsNotPrisons video from Californians for Safety and Justice. 

• "The Prosecution of Youth as Adults in California," is an October 2016 update of a 2015 report from the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI), the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ), and the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL). The update breaks out data by race and geography to show how prosecutorial use of "direct file" in California disproportionately impacts youth of color.  

• Engaging Faith-Based Organizations in Your Community, explores how communities and organizations can better engage with faith-based organizations and initiatives.
• "The $3.4 Trillion Dollar Mistake," from Reinvest 4 Justice, documents the growth in spending on the justice system over the last 30 years and proposes solutions to end the cycle of mass incarceration and criminalization while also actively building stronger, safer, and healthier communities across the country.
• Communications 
  • "Crisis Communications Fundamentals" from Resource Media. (For members only: "Media Crises and Opportunities for Reform, Mar. 2014, a tip sheet on crisis communications. If you don't have your log-in credentials, email us at info@njjn.org.)
  • "PicMonkey Photo Editing Tutorial," from Resource Media.
• Prop. 57
  California's Proposition 57 would, among other things, eliminate the prosecution's ability to "direct file" youth into adult court without a hearing. 
• "Yes on Proposition 57," fact sheet vetted by NJJN member, the California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice.
• "Prop. 57 Letter to the Inside," fact sheet compiled by NJJN member, the Youth Justice Coalition.
• "Information for the Criminal Justice Initiatives for the November 2016 Ballot," fact sheet from Prison Law Office.  
• STORIES FROM INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE YOUTH TRIED IN ADULT COURT
• VIDEO: D'Andre Brooks 
• VIDEO: Daniel 
• VIDEO: John
• VIDEO: Raymond - "Kids are Traumatized," "Pipelining Kids from School to Prison," and "Invest in the Community."

Youth Justice in the News

SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE

• "Millennials Have Lived Through a Doubling of School Segregation: The old methods of encouraging integration in our public education are failing," by Michelle Chen, The Nation, June 15, 2016. 
• "It's Time to Get Real about School Policing," Harold Jordan, The Huffington Post, Oct. 5, 2016.
• "The Prison to School Pipeline," Tim Kennedy, One Day Magazine, Oct. 10, 2016.
• "Coming Up Empty on the Other End of the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Overage, Under-credited, Unwanted," Carolyn Phenicie, The 74, Oct. 2, 2016. 
• "How a Philly cop broke the school-to-prison pipeline," by Samantha Melamed, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26, 2016. 
• "The Right to Remain a Student: How California School Policies Fail to Protect and Serve," ACLU of California, October 2016. 

OTHER

• “Programming, Connections Help California Youth Deal With Demons of Reentry,” by Marisa Zocco, JJIE.org, Oct. 28, 2016. NJJN's Sarah Bryer is quoted.
• "Juvenile justice in Missouri — problems and solutions," St. Louis Public Radio, Oct. 2, 2016, quotes Mae Quinn of MacArthur Justice Center at St. Louis.
• "A boy shot his abusive, neo-Nazi dad. The Supreme Court just let his murder conviction stand," Kristine Guerra, Washington Post, Oct. 5, 2016.
• "California Agrees: There’s No Such Thing As A Child Prostitute," the Huffington Post Blog, September 26, 2016. 
• "In Some States, Raising the Age for Adult Court Is the Easy Part: But in South Carolina, making the juvenile system more humane will be much harder," Eli Hager, The Marshall Project,September 27, 2016.

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