Resource Library
This article calls for the categorical exclusion of young children from juvenile court jurisdiction as a pathway toward the abolition of the juvenile legal system in its current form. This article highlights the landscape of age-based jurisdictional boundaries across the country: 24 states have no minimum age of arrest and prosecution, while 18 states have…
A concentration of a few states has unevenly complied with Miller and the possibility of resentencing provided by Montgomery. Some states have refused to comply at all. This uneven implementation of the Miller decision has a particularly profound impact on racial disparities among those serving JLWOP. An analysis of those deemed worth protecting from JLWOP…
In re Personal Restraint of Asaria Miller, at the urging of merits counsel from the University of Washington’s Race and Justice Clinic, supported by amicus counsel from Seattle University School of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic, the Washington State Court of Appeals took an important step in accounting for the ways that youth of color likely…
This article makes the argument against the imposition of life without parole for young people who commit felony murder using an adolescent development framework. The author analyzes existing case law to outline that, just as the U.S. Supreme Court found the death penalty inappropriate for felony murder and relied on adolescent brain development research in…
This report is an update to the December 2022 report that analyzed incidents of violence by school police officers against students and the disproportionate impact on Black and Latino/a students attending low-income schools. This update provides additional incidents from the 2022-2023 school year and more context about the reported incidents, such as geographical region and…
This report is the product of a one-year project to hear directly from Black communities about what safety means to them. The Black Public Defender Association, in partnership with the BlackRoots Alliance, Cook County Public Defender, and Northwestern University, conducted more than 100 interviews of Black residents in Chicago to collect their stories and advice…
The Sentencing Project released three factsheets highlighting racial disparities in the incarceration of youth: Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration, Disparities in Tribal Youth Incarceration, and Latinx Disparities in Youth Incarceration. These factsheets highlight youth placement rates in 2021 by state and demonstrate that racial disparities persist. Notably, Black youth nationwide are nearly five times more…
The Sentencing Project released three factsheets highlighting racial disparities in the incarceration of youth: Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration, Disparities in Tribal Youth Incarceration, and Latinx Disparities in Youth Incarceration. These factsheets highlight youth placement rates in 2021 by state and demonstrate that racial disparities persist. Notably, Black youth nationwide are nearly five times more…
The Sentencing Project released three factsheets highlighting racial disparities in the incarceration of youth: Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration, Disparities in Tribal Youth Incarceration, and Latinx Disparities in Youth Incarceration. These factsheets highlight youth placement rates in 2021 by state and demonstrate that racial disparities persist. Notably, Black youth nationwide are nearly five times more…
This report details findings from the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement (The Expert Mechanism), who were appointed by the president of the Human Rights Council in 2021 with a mandate to examine the human rights of Black communities in the U.S. as they relate to police interaction…
This article calls for the use of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish federal and state gang statutes. Highlighting the lineage of modern-day gang statutes from Black Codes to vagrancy laws from the Jim Crow era to gang injunctions, this article establishes how current gang statutes remain as “badges and incidents” of slavery. This article walks…
This report highlights the importance of reducing the juvenile legal system’s reliance on incarceration by calling for systems reform that centers alternative-to-incarceration programs, adolescent development research, and evidence-based approaches. Highlighting successful state and local laws as well as policies and practices from across the country, the report offers examples of reforms like prohibiting the use…
This infographic details statistics on the overrepresentation of Native and Indigenous communities in the criminal legal system, noting in particular that the incarceration rate of American Indian/Alaska Native communities increased 60 percent from 1990 to 2020. It cautions that current data collection practices on Native and Indigenous communities are often incomplete and inaccurate due to…
The paper proceeds as follows: Part I describes the changes in law in the late 1980s and early 1990s that resulted in a marked increase in young people sentenced to life or life-like sentences, as well as the evolving understanding of psychosocial and neurological development that followed. Part II summarizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth…
This position paper reviews the research on disparities in justice system outcomes based on whether a person is represented by a public defender or by court-appointed private counsel finding that court-appointed counsel achieve less favorable outcomes due largely to differences in compensation and resources available to them. The paper also reviews the literature on the…
