Juvenile Justice

The decline under DA Larry Krasner, who took office in 2018, marks a significant change in juvenile justice in Pennsylvania.

At 16, Larry Rosser was imprisoned for killing a woman who sexually and physically abused him. He served 22 years in the California prison system before being released in 2017, after parole commissioners became convinced he was a rehabilitated victim.

A 10-year-old was charged with assault for throwing a ball at a classmate. The case was dropped, but its effect is still felt.

California Supreme Court rules that the government cannot subject a young person on probation, as a condition of release, to random searches of his electronic devices and social media accounts.

Richard Kinder thought he would die in an Alabama prison until the Supreme Court ruled mandatory juvenile life without parole unconstitutional. But last year, despite a judge concluding there was “uncontradicted evidence” that Kinder had worked to rehabilitate himself, the state parole board refused him release.

In rhetoric reminiscent of the ‘superpredator‘ scare of the 1990s, the New Orleans District Attorney warned of ‘a brazen population of delinquent teens.‘ But advocates and crime analysts alike say the data doesn’t support his fearmongering claims about kids and crime.

Critics say that Arlington County Commonwealth Attorney Theo Stamos, who is being challenged in a June primary, has a pattern of treating children too harshly.

The Orleans district attorney has said that violent youth are the city’s biggest crime problem.

Cook County has a new contract for juvenile ankle monitors that critics say are an invasion of privacy.

Washington detains more children for status offenses such as truancy and running away than any other state in the country. State lawmakers want to change that.

In 1996, Michele Benjamin was sentenced to life without parole for killing a man who she said solicited her for sex and menaced her with a weapon in New Orleans. A Supreme Court decision led her to be re-sentenced to life with a chance at parole in 2016. Today, a parole hearing brings the possibility of freedom.

The Department of Justice is leaving Shelby County, but discrimination against Black children in court continues, a federal monitor says.

Josie and Clint interview Abd’Allah Lateef, Pennsylvania Coordinator for the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network.

Trump didn’t start it, but we can end it.

Under Raise the Age, ‘there are kids similarly situated who are being treated totally differently.’

In 2016 and 2017, more than 80 percent of children charged as adults by the Allegheny County district attorney were Black.

A petition argues that people seeking to escape the sex offender registry, including those put on it as children, deserve more than a single shot.

Recent Supreme Court rulings have led to a review of life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed at age 17 and younger, but attorneys for Avis Lee say there’s no reason to stop there.

The rocky implementation of New York’s Raise the Age law shows that young people in detention need love, not force.

Two teenagers are facing life without parole sentences for capital murder, though it’s not clear they pulled the trigger.

A man sentenced to die in prison is inciting debate over ‘felony murder’ rules in Colorado.

Rep. John Becker doubles down on his recent comments about the tasing of an 11-year-old for allegedly shoplifting.

Before Edgar Coker was exonerated in a rape case, he underwent therapy meant to prevent sexual reoffenses. Thousands of kids involved in sexual offenses are forced into therapies like “relapse prevention” that experts say are ineffective.

Legislation passed in Massachusetts and pending in California would set a minimum age for children to enter the juvenile justice system.

A new lawsuit says Riverside County’s probation officers threaten to prosecute kids for ‘pre-delinquent’ behavior.

With journalist Victoria Law.

Years after two landmark Supreme Court rulings, prosecutors in Louisiana are still overwhelmingly seeking life sentences for children.

At a Pennsylvania school, an 18-year-old female student was arrested for a consensual sexual act with a 16-year-old boy.

On Wednesday, May 16, 16-year-old Rosalyn “Bird” Holmes was able to walk out of prison and hug her mother. Though the teenager has yet to be indicted, let alone convicted, of any crime, she nonetheless spent the past 40 days in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, an adult women’s prison in Henning, Tennessee. Had it not […]

By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun.

By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana jury convicted Montgomery of murder […]

A 16-year-old Memphis girl charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a teen boy is being held in pretrial isolation at the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. The Shelby County District Attorney’s office charged her as an adult in the April 3, 2017 shooting death of 17-year-old Deago Brown. She was just 15 […]

In Oklahoma last month, the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office charged a 13-year-old boy with first-degree murder after an October play date ended with him hitting his two friends (ages 8 and 10) with a crossbow arrow, killing one. According to NewsOK, the arrow went through the 10-year-old, killing him, and punctured the 8-year-old in the arm. The 13-year-old boy told authorities that the incident was an accident. However, the 8-year-old who was hit told investigators that the 13-year-old was angry at his friends.

In Oklahoma last month, the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office charged a 13-year-old boy with first-degree murder after an October play date ended with him hitting his two friends (ages 8 and 10) with a crossbow arrow, killing one. According to NewsOK, the arrow went through the 10-year-old, killing him, and punctured the 8-year-old in the […]

In The Princess Bride, Prince Humperdinck has Wesley strapped to a device known as The Machine, which has a lever that can be raised from 1 to 50. When the lever is turned to 1, the machine sucks away one year of the victim’s life, with each tick of the lever corresponding to another year taken away. […]

In March of 2010, Jesus Aguirre, Jr. had just turned 16 and was hanging out with a group of friends in Buena Park, California, when a fight broke out amongst nearly 20 boys. One of the boys fired a shotgun full of birdshot at another teen, who sustained “superficial” injuries, according to the Buena Park Police Department […]

There’s no other way to put it: 2017 was bleak. Bleak because the country’s top public health organization is now prohibited from using the term “science-based.” Bleak because we’re surprised that a man accused of sexually harassing and assaulting young girls — and extols slavery — lost an election. Bleak because the President of These United States stood in front of a portrait of Andrew […]

Anquan Boldin, DeAndre Levy, Tobias Harris, Anthony Tolliver, Stan Van Gundy

Last week, councilmembers in Washington State’s largest county unanimously passed a bill that eliminates solitary confinement for youth detained in adult correctional facilities. In doing so, they joined a growing group of lawmakers across the country taking a stance against a practice that has disastrous effects on kids and teenagers tangled up in the criminal justice […]

Once again, police are vilifying kids.