CJJ Today

12
Mar

School Discipline Changes Coming to Maryland

By Ebony Harley Community Engagement Manager Advocates for Children and Youth Abstract: Advocates for Children and Youth reflect on the Maryland State Board of Education’s approval of the School Discipline Reform.
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06
Mar

OP-ED: We Can Do More to Ensure Equitable Treatment of LGBTQ Youth in the Juvenile Justice System

By Marie Williams, JD, Executive Director, Coalition for Juvenile Justice & Ellen Khan, M.S.S., Director, Children, Youth and Families Program, Human Rights Campaign We need to do a much better job ensuring that teens who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBTQ) are treated equitably by the juvenile justice system. A report from the Equity Project, tells us that LGBTQ youth are more likely than their heterosexual peers to be placed in a juvenile detention facility. Additionally, Dr. Angela Irvine has found that LGBTQ youth are detained at nearly double the rate of heterosexual teens for status offenses, like skipping school and running away from home. Status offenses are behaviors that constitute a crime merely because the person who engaged in them is not an adult.
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27
Feb

OP-ED: To Address Disproportionate Minority Contact Keep Status Offenders Out of Courts

By Marie Williams, JD Executive Director Coalition for Juvenile Justice All children deserve to be treated fairly in the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, all too often, that is not the case for minority youth. Under the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA), states are required to address disproportionality of racial, ethnic and linguistic minority youth at every stage of the juvenile justice system, also known as disproportionate minority contact (DMC). In 2011, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that only 34 states had implemented DMC systems improvement and delinquency prevention strategies. Those efforts, however, largely ignored a significant number of youth in the justice system: those at risk for, or charged with status offenses.
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12
Feb

My 2014 Wish List for a Reauthorized but Improved JJDPA

By Robin Jenkins, Ph.D. 2014 – wow. The time is a-aflyin’, isn’t it? So let’s get down to real business this year and reauthorize the JJDP Act. Not the baseline, compliance-focused, core requirements sort of formula that the JJDPA is known for. No, let’s re-imagine the JJDPA as perhaps JJDPA 5.0. My ‘New Year’ wishes include many things related to vulnerable children and social justice.
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