Yesterday, continuing the move towards improving Missouri's justice system for ALL youth, Missouri's House of Representatives adopted SCR29, a resolution establishing a "Juvenile Justice Task Force" that will make recommendations to the General Assembly by 2015 on:

According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s latest bulletin, U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction handled nearly 1.4 million delinquency cases in 2010. “Delinquency Cases Waived to Criminal Court, 2010” shows that more than half (54%) of these cases were handled formally (i.e., a petition was filed requesting an adjudication or waiver hearing) and of the petitioned delinquency caseload, about 1% resulted in judicial waiver to adult criminal court. The number of delinquency cases judicially waived peaked in 1994 at 13,300 cases, more than double the number of cases waived in 1985. In 2010, juvenile courts waived an estimated 6,000 delinquency cases, 55% fewer cases than in 1994.

By Jessica Sandoval

From April 7 -21, the photographs, which have each been printed on 10-foot banners, will be exhibited on George Mason University’s Fairfax campus (situated in the main public square in front of the Fenwick Library).

The National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) held its annual legislative conference last week at which CFYJ presented on recent state trends in keeping youth out of the adult criminal justice system. We highlighted the work of over 20 states in their efforts to end the placement of youth in criminal courts, jails, and prisons. Additionally, CFYJ provided background on the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) and shared recommendations to state-level PTA members on how to best advocate for JJDPA reauthorization and improve the current core requirements.

In February, the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) was represented at the Rebellious Lawyering Conference (RebLaw) hosted by Yale University. 

Dwayne Betts and Jessica Sandoval

RebLaw is the nation's largest student-run, public interest conference. Each year the conference brings together practitioners, law students, and community activists from around the country to discuss innovative and progressive approaches to law and social change. The conference, grounded in the spirit of influential attorney, Gerald Lopez's rebellious lawyering, seeks to build a community of law students, practitioners, and activists seeking to work in the service of social change movements and to challenge hierarchies of race, wealth, and gender within legal practice and education.

I was privileged to participate as a panelist on the “Roper, Graham, and Miller: What Now, What Next?” panel.  Youth can no longer be sentenced to death, life without parole for non-homicide offenses, or mandatory life without parole. The panel discussed the larger impact of these decisions. Our panel was facilitated by Dwayne Betts, long-time supporter and spokesperson for CFYJ and a first year law student at Yale.  The panelists included: Brandy Buskey, staff attorney at the ACLU;  Vinny Schiraldi, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Probation; and Marsha Levick, co-founder, Deputy Director and Chief Counsel of the Juvenile Law Center.

The room was packed full of law students from around the country who asked very insightful and provocative questions pertaining to these cases and juvenile justice reform in general.  The discussion was robust and wholly agreed upon that Roper, Graham, & Miller was correctly decided.   The panel also discussed that these cases have tightly driven home the message that kids are different and that many factors should be explored before ever considering the adult court as an option.  One option explored was that states and congress should consider not housing youth in adult facilities, and all youth should originate in juvenile justice system while the factors of each of their cases are
considered.

To read more about the dangers of housing youth in adult facilities, please click here.

On February 13th and 14th, the Campaign for Youth Justice participated in a meeting of the “Committee on a Prioritized Plan to Implement a Developmental Approach in Juvenile Justice Reform” held at the National Academies of Sciences. CFYJ’s Policy Director, Carmen Daugherty, participated in an afternoon panel with fellow advocates from the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) and Justice Policy Institute (JPI) to discuss the need to reauthorize, and appropriately fund, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). The panelists discussed the importance of the JJDPA and how it helps states leverage federal dollars towards innovative, evidence based programming and the need for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to be the leader in juvenile justice research.

To learn more about why JJDPA matters, visit here. 

To read coverage by the Juvenile Justice Exchange about this meeting, visit here.

On February 11th, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a letter to state governors reminding them of their obligations under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and setting a strict deadline for governor certification of compliance. Per the PREA standards, states risk losing valuable federal dollars--such as the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Formula Program and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) Act Formula Grant Program--if unable to provide DOJ with certification of compliance or assurance that money will be used to come into compliance.  

 

On November 15th, The National Crittenton Foundation, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty, Inequality & Public Policy, and Human Rights Project for Girls hosted a Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice for Disconnected Girls forum at Georgetown University Law Center. This event launched a new policy series entitled Voices and Visibility for Disconnected Girls: Responding to Trauma. The goal of this new series is to explore the importance of trauma-informed approaches to girls in school, the juvenile justice system, and child welfare system.

Join the Campaign for Youth Justice in celebrating the 19^th National Symposium on Juvenile Services “Youth Development in Juvenile Justice: Promising Approaches, Positive Conditions and Safe and Protective Environments.” The event is sponsored by the National Partnership for Juvenile Services (NPJS) and takes place on October 20-24, 2013 in Louisville, Kentucky. CFYJ will be hosting “Jail Removal of Youth in Adult Criminal Justice Systems: A State Trends Update,” a panel session that will discuss the policy reforms that a number of states have undertaken in the last decade, including the removal of youth from the adult criminal justice system and from adult jails and prisons. The panel will take place on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 at 3:15-4:45 p.m. The panelists will include CFYJ’s Director of Policy Carmen Daugherty.