Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Peer Court Keeps Youth Accountable, Removes Shame and Stigma

    Marin County's Peer Solutions program is a youth court designed to help keep students out of the juvenile justice system. In addition to attending personal development classes and completing volunteer hours, teens in the program attend "hearings" where other participants act as the jury to facilitate discussions around accountability and ways to move forward.

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  • Project FLEX brings sports with a purpose to teens in Illinois juvenile justice system

    Coaches from Northern Illinois University's Project FLEX program facilitate sports matches at youth prisons a few times a week to improve recidivism rates. During huddles, the coaches combine sports with psychology-based lessons to emphasize positive skills and strengths.

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  • A Florida School Received a Threat. Did a Red Flag Law Prevent a Shooting?

    Amidst gun violence and mass shootings, 19 states and D.C. have enacted red flag laws, or extreme risk protection orders, that allow law enforcement to mitigate threats of gun violence by removing guns from a person’s possession. Studies in states that have adopted red flag laws, specifically Connecticut and Indiana, have found that for every 10 to 20 people who had guns taken away, one life was saved.

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  • Connecticut's turnaround of troubled juvenile system sets a standard, says justice-equity organization - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

    As part of a revamp of its juvenile justice system, Connecticut launched youth treatment centers where residents meet regularly with counselors and mental health professionals. The centers focus on providing individualized care and a more welcoming atmosphere than traditional juvenile detention programs.

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  • Restorative justice solutions for youth are growing abroad, can they become part of the mix in the U.S.

    As North Carolina reevaluates its approach to juvenile justice, the state is looking to examples like Italy, where restorative justice practices such as victim-offender mediation, in which the victim and perpetrator of a crime meet with a mediator to discuss and reconstruct the incident, play a critical role in cases involving youth. The country incarcerates fewer children and young adults on a given day than North Carolina despite its population being roughly six times the size of the state's.

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  • What happens when crime victims and offenders meet? Outagamie County is finding out.

    The Outagamie County Youth and Family Services agency makes restorative justice dialogue available to the victims of crimes committed by juveniles. After preparation with a trained mediator, the two parties meet to discuss the harm suffered by a victim and why a young person committed the offense. Both can be helped through a face-to-face conversation. The county is now considering expanding the program to adults.

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  • In Arizona, a radical change in juvenile detention

    Unrealistic fears of a wave of youth violence left rural Apache County, Colorado, with an unused, costly youth detention facility. So the local courts decided to refashion the empty jail into the Loft Legacy Teen Center, an after-school hangout offering a "care-first" approach to teen problems. Mentors and a truancy prevention program help youth avoid trouble and get educations. Youth arrests have dropped, though that might also be credited to the state's risk-assessment tool that is meant to guard against overuse of punishment.

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  • Where Juvenile Detention Looks More Like Teens Hanging Out

    Apache County, Arizona, once had a costly, under-used juvenile detention center and a traditional philosophy that stern punishment would steer young people away from misbehavior. Now the abandoned detention center is The Loft Legacy Teen Center, an after-school hangout with mentors, connections to social services, and a place where youth can go to socialize – a rare commodity in this rural community. It's run and staffed by the court system and its probation department. But its methods are love and support, not threats of arrest and incarceration. Juvenile arrests are now way down.

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  • Since when is being a teenager a crime?

    Neighboring states of Wyoming and South Dakota take starkly different approaches toward youth who get in trouble. Side-by-side comic panels follow two real cases through each system. A South Dakota teen gets help that steers her off a destructive path. A Wyoming teen gets punished, and ends up in a downward spiral of more trouble and more punishment. Both states once had relatively high youth incarceration rates. Now only one of them, Wyoming, does: the second-worst in the U.S., and three times the national average.

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  • Austin youth re-entry program has 15% recidivism rate, compared to 75% nationwide

    Jail to Jobs pays youth while they get trained for jobs in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, and cooking. The youth come from youth detention, the streets, probation, and foster care and their trainers are formerly incarcerated. Jail to Jobs, with four locations in Austin, has helped more than 600 young people find employment despite their pasts. Only 15% of its graduates have been jailed afterward, a lower-than-average recidivism rate.

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