Posts by Amy Borror
2022 Summit Top 10
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel We broadcast Summit from Puerto Rico so we could dance bombas, drink pina coladas, and revolutionize youth defense, and I can confirm we did all of the above. If you missed Summit, well, you missed a lot. Please make better life choices next year. But the…
Read MoreGault Center op-ed in Teen Vogue
In this piece, HyeJi speaks directly to adolescents, to provide young people with empowering information to make change.
Read MoreADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT Advocating for children to be treated like children What’s At Stake Children are different than adults. Despite this self-evident truth, many people in the juvenile legal system treat children as small adults—subjecting them to harsher penalties without considering their development and opportunities for growth. Several studies have revealed how adolescent development shapes youth…
Read MoreHow to celebrate the Gaultiversary
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel This is not a drill. May 15 is Gault Day! Mark your calendars. Passover brings matzah, the Eid new clothes, Christmas brings my father commiserating with Ebenezer Scrooge while watching A Christmas Carol. Each holiday has a tradition! The Gaultiversary deserves no less. But…
Read MoreCasey KK’s American (Constitutional Right to Counsel) Top 10
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel How excited am I that we have our first Black female Supreme Court Justice who is a public defender? (Once a public defender, always a public defender; it’s blood in, blood out.) Very! But not more than Senator Cory Booker. No one was more excited…
Read MoreDear K.K.
Dear K.K., My dear client has a love-hate relationship with his school district. He is currently at an alternative school. One day in January, he left his school and entered the main high school. He was let in by another student and bypassed the metal detector. He wandered the school, entering classrooms and generally…
Read MoreTop 10 Reasons why Appellate Attorneys are Bae
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel Once upon a time, there was a curly-haired defender who hated having to play Go Fish about discovery before a transfer hearing: “Prosecutor, do you have the statement from the store clerk mentioned in the police report?” “No. Go fish. I don’t plan on using it…
Read More10 New Year’s Revolutions
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel Hey, so that holiday break was . . . different. I spent New Year’s Eve doing shots of Pepto with flat ginger ale chasers—a bubble gum guts cocktail (TM pending)—after a truly regrettable, but unforgettable, chicken sandwich. Texting “Happy New Year! Great news, it’s only violent…
Read More12 Days of Yuletide Youth-Tide
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel Christmas songs are weird. Between people demanding figgy pudding and refusing to leave until they get some, to the wildly problematic Baby, It’s Cold Outside. (This maiden aunt’s mind is, indeed, vicious, but it’s because of your inability to understand consent.) Is it the public…
Read More10 Things I’m Thankful for as a Youth Defender
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel Several Thanksgivings ago, perhaps fueled by too many Hallmark movies, I suggested we go around the table and say what we were thankful for. I was feeling misty-eyed, Norman Rockwell, The Best Man Thanksgiving vibes until we got to my four-year-old nephew, who asked if I…
Read MoreTales from the Gault: 10 of the Scariest Things about the Juvenile Legal System
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel When I was in high school a group of friends and I went to track down “Hookerman” on some abandoned train tracks in Northwest New Jersey. The story was that a train conductor lost his hand taking mail bags off hooks at the train depot and…
Read MoreBack to (Defending Youth in) School
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel I always loved back to school. It was a time of Lisa Frank, Trapper Keeper, and weirdly attractively smelling erasers. Teachers, the Dow Jones of school supplies, forecasted how many pencils I would need. Back to school in 2021 might look different—I’m taking my nephew…
Read More10 Things States Got Right in Youth Defense
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel Some people collect shot glasses or magnets from their travels. Me, I collect enviable local youth defense jurisprudence. *Due to Covid restrictions, these states were visited via Zoom. Washington Despite what my research—reading Twilight (Team Jacob)—led me to expect, my trip to Washington was…
Read MoreKeeping up with the Joneses: 10 Things I Kinda Maybe Don’t Hate About Jones
by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel When I first read Jones,2 I said a bad word. Now, this isn’t what we in the biz would call aberrant behavior, as I am from New Jersey. However, really, Kavanaugh?! It is hard to accept any perceived step back when we still have so…
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