Juvenile Justice

The Children’s Defense Fund, a major U.S. child advocacy organization, has a new vice president in charge of strategy and program.

The 16-year-old's killing by staffers at the for-profit group home where he lived has led to laws changing and similar facilities closing nationwide

The small crowd carrying signs outside the county courthouse this week was classic funky Santa Cruz, folks milling about in T-shirts emblazoned with rasta and LGBTQ-themed logos, tie-dye and boho styles. But in this era of national protest over racial injustice, the protesters did not seek to reduce sentencing or end mass incarceration.

Five months after Los Angeles embraced a sweeping plan to reform its juvenile justice system, the county’s chief executive officer announced funding would not be included in her proposed budget for next year, angering many youth advocates.

Almost 300 people in North Carolina who were prosecuted in adult court for things they did as 16- and 17-year-olds had those records erased from the books this week.

The news came as Durham County’s chief prosecutor, Satana Deberry, announced that she was taking the action voluntarily in the wake of laws that have changed in the intervening years.

The number of kids ages 8 to 21 incarcerated in New York today is almost half what it was 10 years ago. That remarkable trend hasn’t changed who’s inside: mostly Black and brown youth.

A Manhattan Family Court clerk has been suspended without pay pending an investigation into allegations she used a racial slur describing a Black 15-year-old in a court hearing Thursday. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill deleting the term from the state’s child welfare laws in recognition of psychosocial studies finding that young people are able to make responsible choices when given the appropriate interventions to counter the trauma that filled their formative years.

Amid recent news that 1 in 4 California foster youth face homelessness after aging out of foster care, a bill moving through the state Legislature aims to invest $100 million in increasing the housing stock for this particularly vulnerable population.