By Sean Coughlan, October 5, 2020, BBC News Family and Education. "Once you're caught in the grip of the system you are doomed," says the founder of a radically different approach to jailing young offenders. Steve Chalke aims to stop a revolving door of criminality that at present sees 69% of young prisoners reoffending within a year of release. He says the "19th Century, Dickensian" approach is "absolutely broken". Instead he will lead England's first "secure school", opening near...

By Celest Fremon, Witness LA, October 2, 2020 At approximately 4:42 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 823 , a budget trailer bill that will lead to the closure of the state’s troubled and violent youth prison system. Yet the bill is far more than that. It is also is designed as an historic reform measure intended to fundamentally transform the way that the state and its 58 counties approach youth justice. Furthermore, the bill includes the creation of...

By Emmy Betz and Benjamin Li, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, September 30, 2020 September usually marks the return to school, with teachers setting up classrooms and youth headed off on a new year of learning and growth. But 2020 has been anything but usual. In many parts of the country, learning has moved online as teachers set up virtual classrooms and youth engage from their bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms. Parents are faced with balancing work and oversight of home learning;...

By Laura Furr, September 21, 2020, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange How different would today look if people most affected by decisions held equal power in making those decisions? If public health decision-makers included Black, Indigenous and Latinx patients who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and suffer the effects of racially biased health care? If police accountability review boards, prosecutor’s offices and elected city leaders had actual power over law enforcement...

The downstream effect of childhood trauma has been well documented regarding the biological and psychosocial impacts. This presentation will highlight the neurobiological changes associated with ACEs that function as a "primer" for the onset of addiction and related behaviors. It will conclude with principles for influencing these same pathways that assist with restoration of the mind and health downstream effect of childhood trauma has been well documented regarding the biological and...

By Kat Schuster, September 1, 2020, Patch. Nonviolent former prisoners who participated in fire camps will now have an opportunity to become year-round, full-time firefighters. SACRAMENTO, CA — Lawmakers approved a bill Monday that will finally allow former prisoners to pursue a career in fire. The new legislation arrived while fire crews were overwhelmed, facing multiple devastating lightning complex fires across California. AB 2147 , authored by Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes, will allow...

By Jerry Davich, Chicago Tribune, September 7, 2020 “Be loving. Be caring. Be there.” These three simple child-rearing reminders can do so much to curtail the barrage of adverse childhood experiences in what can be an abusive, neglectful society. “Adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs, are defined as emotionally traumatic events that can occur any time before a child turns 18. These situations include divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, parental mental illness and...

By Ashley Smith-Juarez, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, September 2, 2020 As a society, we owe a special commitment to youth in custody. Incarceration of any kind causes very real trauma and doing so at a time when young people are growing and learning only compounds the trauma. Our juvenile justice system must seek not to punish, but to support these children’s social, emotional and educational development. In normal circumstances, our national juvenile justice system does not always...

By Foon Rhee, August 25, 2020, Sacramento.news. Essay: Closing California’s juvenile justice division is a good start, but young people need community support By Daniel Mendoza In the midst of a global pandemic and a national reckoning on racial injustice, California has a historic opportunity to do right by young people of color. As Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to close the Division of Juvenile Justice and “end youth imprisonment as we know it,” we can shift from a punishment-first approach to...

Looking to epidemiology, the study is driven in part by two basic facts: (1) diseases do not occur by chance — there are always determinants for the disease to occur — and (2) diseases are not distributed at random — distribution is related to risk factors that need to be studied for the population in order to identify solutions. The state of homelessness of course is not a disease, but it behaves like diseases. Homelessness does not occur by chance nor is it randomly distributed, which...

By Michael Fitzgerald, The Imprint, July 30, 2020 In a sign of the nation’s rapid rethinking of the justice system prompted by protests against racism and police brutality, dozens of elected prosecutors, corrections officials and probation chiefs have called for all youth prisons to be shut down. They described the lockups as “ineffective, inefficient and inhumane.” The open statement , posted online and announced at a virtual news conference Thursday, goes beyond pushing for “the closure of...

By Brian Richart, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, July 27, 2020 Probation in California has the responsibility of treating and supervising our community’s most high-needs and high-risk youth. We take our role in promoting healthy, prepared and positive adolescents seriously and provide each youth the supervision and support services they need to help guide them into adulthood. The use of individualized, evidence-based practices to advance the long-term well-being of youth is...