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The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather. Her feet stuck out from the seat in small gray sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a...

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to stop collecting fees once charged to families of juvenile delinquents for their incarceration, ending a practice decried by criminal justice advocates as an unfair tax on minorities and an ineffective means of rehabilitating young people who commit crimes. The motion, sponsored by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn, directs the county’s Probation Department to stop accepting payment and cancel nearly $90 million in juvenile detention fees...

The consequences of sexual assault fall overwhelmingly on the victims. About 0.7 percent of rapes and attempted rapes end with a felony conviction for the perpetrator, according to an estimate based on the best of the imperfect measures available. On the other side of the incident, at least 89 percent of victims report some level of distress, including high rates of physical injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and substance abuse. [For more on this story by Andrew Van...

Imagine a small, developing nation whose education system is severely lacking: schools are poorly funded, students can't afford tuition or books, fewer than half of indigenous girls even attend school — and often drop out to take care of siblings or get married. These are the schools of rural Guatemala. Now meet a firebrand educator who thinks he has a way to reinvent schools in Guatemala. [For more on this story by JOHN BURNETT, go to...

Let’s make this an easy assignment: We believe that America can take a huge step forward with the prevention of ACEs and trauma by helping school boards develop ACEs policy. This policy would articulate how a school identifies students with trauma due to ACEs and provides the help they and their parents need. The policy would also educate all school staff about ACEs and create a trauma-informed learning environment. Some readers might be thinking, “School boards are not ready to take on ACEs...

I asked @Robin M Cogan to share some about why and how she has hosted community cafes in New Jersey. I'm sharing this now because there are so many fabulous documentaries available (and more coming out all of the time). Community cafes, based on the world cafe model, are great to have after a shared a movie experience. Some of us come alive in front of a huge crowd, and some of us find meeting facilitation or group discussions a little daunting. Whatever camp you might be in,...

When we think of creating family legacies and preserving family traditions, we focus on positive connections and joyous occasions. But often joy is only part of the family story. Pain, while often ignored or even denied, can be passed down from generation to generation. This legacy of pain, coined Intergenerational trauma (IGT) after World War II, results from a family member’s personal trauma, such as: Cultural attacks like the Holocaust or even 9-11 Extreme poverty A natural disaster...

Engaging parents and children in effective trauma treatment can be difficult in the best of circumstances. Conventionally, engagement and rapport building begins in the first face-to-face session. More often than not, it is a harsh set-up. Parents and children may enter the first session angry, frustrated, or hopeless, with their arms tightly crossed. The slightest provocation could open conflict and confrontation between parents and children.

“If you’re just out there somewhere on the land, dead, and nobody’s looking for you—that’s the worst thing in the world,” says Lissa Yellowbird-Chase in Vanished, a new documentary from The Atlantic. Yellowbird-Chase, a private citizen and volunteer investigator, has devoted her life to searching for missing American Indians. American Indian women and girls are reported missing at a disproportionately high rate compared with most other demographics. Although there is no federal database that...

Part of the challenge of prison reform in our country is defining the nature of the problem and what remedies are available for a cure. More than any other time in recent history, Americans recognize the failure of our correctional systems to rehabilitate. We are witnessing an epidemic of mass incarceration, with almost 2.2 million citizens residing in our jails and prisons. For the most part, we know there is a problem, but what can we do about it? There is important, transformational work...

Despite their names, state “departments of correction” in the United States aren’t known for correcting much. More than seven of every 10 prisoners, according to some studies, are arrested again less than four years after they are released. And while recent years have seen the beginning of a national decline in the number of male prisoners, the situation has not improved much for women, who remain incarcerated at stubbornly high levels. Connecticut is trying to push back by focusing on one...

In the era of President Donald Trump , inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants flows fast and free . And in the midst of tight mid-term elections, the Republican Party has largely abandoned campaign messages focused on tax cuts and the economy in favor of divisive (and misleading ) advertisements suggesting that Democratic candidates support terrorists, or want to throw open America's borders to violent criminals. Underlying many of these ads is a narrative popularized by the president, one...