Shifting Gears on Juvenile Justice Communications New MessageMemo and Toolkit Help Advocates Make Stronger Case for Reform Advocates are gaining momentum in reforming the nation's juvenile justice system so that it is fairer and more just, takes a more age-appropriate approach to juvenile crime, and puts a greater emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation, and alternatives to detention. But youth justice involves two complex, abstract systems--- youth development and criminal justice--- and the...

From The Sentencing Project, January 2020 The United States is a world leader in incarceration and keeps nearly 7 million persons under criminal justice supervision. More than 2.2 million are in prison or jail, while 4.6 million are monitored in the community on probation or parole. More punitive sentencing laws and policies, not increases in crime rates, have produced this high rate of incarceration. Ending mass incarceration will require changing sentencing policies and practices, scaling...

By Vivian Watts, The Virginian-Pilot, May 6, 2020 In my career as the former executive director of Fairfax CASA, as well as my work as the former secretary of Transportation and Public Safety and in the Virginia House of Delegates, I have fought to protect vulnerable children from abuse and exploitation knowing that our failure to do so has catastrophic consequences. For more than 20 years clinicians and social scientists have studied the impact that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and...

New Jersey plans to spend a staggering $445,504 per incarcerated youth in 2022 to house them in facilities that are almost 80% empty. The time is now for New Jersey to close its youth prisons and invest in community-based alternatives. The current system, with its focus wholly on punishment rather than rehabilitation, the current system leaves whole communities — as well as the families of both victims and offenders — with unresolved trauma that continues to reverberate long after the...