direct file

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. A report released last week by Oakland-based nonprofit Human Impact Partners uses an emerging research tool to make visible the health impacts of juvenile incarceration, especially for youth under the age of 18 who are sent to adult court and adult correctional facilities.

In California, young people increasingly are being treated as adults by the justice system. I was one of them. When I was 14, my friends and I got into a fight with a man in my hometown of Watsonville, California.

In the lead-up to a Nov. 8 election proposition that will determine the future of the direct file process in California, a new report points to the increasing prosecution of youth as adults in the state.

Come November, California is almost certain to deliver a hefty number of electoral votes to Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential election. As a whole, California is one of the nation’s bluest states, but that’s not necessarily the case for elected officials across its 58 counties, including district attorneys.

An initiative sponsored by Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown that would make it more difficult to try juveniles in adult courts was officially approved for a spot on the state’s Nov. 8 ballot today.

As Youth Services Insider reported last week, recent California research suggests that a race gap has grown into a race crater when it comes to the direct filing of juvenile cases in adult court.

A true measure of racial disparity in the juvenile justice system compares the outcomes, at any or many points, for youths of a different race who’ve been accused of the same offense.

by Nisha Ajmani  Mark*, age 17, is one of many California adolescents currently detained in juvenile hall anxiously awaiting a judicial decision on whether they will be prosecuted as juveniles or adults.