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    juvenile justice

    A juvenile detention center.

    Stop Crime Talk: Overcriminalization of Youth Spells Disaster for America’s Future

    From conventional therapy to culturally relevant initiatives and healing-based, trauma-informed programming, youth can grow in a healthy manner through a sustainable relationship with community-based caregivers.

    Jojo Padilla
    Mar 23, 2025

    The currently popular “tough on crime” narratives touted by local, state, and federal policymakers—as evidenced by the attacks on mayors of sanctuary cities at recent congressional hearings—pose a risk that the United States will revert to a dangerous place that will harm marginalized communities for decades to come.

    The nation’s stability is directly tied to the stability of this country’s younger generations. As a 25-year veteran of Juvenile Diversion programs in Denver, I took an early retirement to lead a nonprofit that works with young people referred through deflection, a pre-citation or pre-arrest intervention that connects young people to resources without criminalizing their behavior.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    criminal justice system
    Man rests during work.

    Fed Workforce Cuts Leave Formerly Incarcerated Individuals Without a Future

    When policymakers strip away funding for education and job training, it is not just setting up individuals for failure—it is ensuring a future where entire communities remain trapped in cycles of poverty and incarceration.

    Pauline Rogers
    Mar 14, 2025

    Imagine being sentenced to prison as a juvenile. You enter a world not designed to rehabilitate you, but to warehouse you alongside adults who have long since given up hope. The promise of education and job training is nonexistent, or at best, a fleeting privilege reserved for a select few.

    You serve your time, only to return to a society that has already made up its mind about your worth. You are ready to rebuild your life, but the structures necessary to support that transition—education, employment, and rehabilitation programs—are crumbling around you.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    mass incarceration
    Young boy in prison cell

    Stop Locking Up Children, Americans Say

    'The things we’re doing aren’t just wrong because we’re doing them to kids, they’re wrong because we’re doing them to humans'

    Nika Knight Beauchamp
    Mar 03, 2016

    Americans "overwhelmingly support" shuttering all of the country's juvenile prisons and replacing them with community-based rehabilitation and prevention programs, according to a poll announced Thursday by Youth First, a new campaign to close youth prisons nationwide.

    "We believe that youth prison model should be abandoned and replaced with more humane and less costly alternatives to incarceration," Liz Ryan, president of Youth First, said during a Thursday press conference.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    News
    juvenile justice

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