This report challenges the notion that Georgia’s youth legal system is built to rehabilitate and suggests measures that protect the health and humanity of all the state’s children. First, this report will explore the myth of the “superpredator” and its impact on perceived Black youth criminality. Second, it will detail the state’s school-to-prison pipeline and…
This report details the results of the first-ever state-wide Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) survey administered to people currently incarcerated for crimes they committed as children (under eighteen). The trauma measured from ACEs surveys include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; physical and emotional neglect; separation from parents; mental illness or substance abuse in the home; parent…
This one-page infographic from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention illustrates trends in delinquency cases in 2022.
On August 29, 2024, the Gault Center hosted a National Youth Defense Townhall focused on the role of youth defenders in transforming the juvenile legal system. The Townhall outlined a theory of change rooted in cultivating critical connections to harness our collective power to transform systems of harm and punishment. In attendance were nearly 200…
Florida routinely pushes Black children out of schools and into a legal system with well-documented harms. In recent years, the state has made significant investments in school law enforcement and self-proclaimed “tough love” youth legal system policies, purportedly in the name of public safety. However, these investments have yielded a system that disparately disciplines, arrests,…
The National Youth Justice Network released a report detailing legislative trends on youth rights from 2023. This report highlights key gains made by several states around juvenile court fines and fees, expungement, transfer, and youth interrogation among other issues, and flags several regressive legislative trends rooted in harmful narratives about young people. This overview of…
This one-page infographic from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention illustrates statistics on waiver from juvenile to criminal courts.
This research article explores the history of girls prosecuted as adults in courts across the United States. It explores the effects of childhood trauma and victimization on brain and physical development and the connection to involvement in the criminal legal system as children. The article describes the results of a survey of young women who…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali were joined by Eric Campbell, formerly incarcerated founder of Some People Understand Differently (SPUD), Inc.; Carmen Daugherty, Deputy Executive Director of Advancement Project; and Kristen Rome, Co-Executive Director of Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights. This…
The COVID-19 pandemic, declared a public health emergency in the United States on March 13, 2020, had an impact on the policies, procedures, and data collection activities of juvenile courts relating to the referrals and processing of youth. Mitigation efforts such as stay-at-home orders and school closures impacted the volume and types of law-violating behavior…
This checklist can be used to assess the presence of constitutional violations throughout the course of a client’s case. Please refer to the National Youth Defense Systems Standards and their accompanying User Guide for litigation strategies to challenge potential constitutional violations noted in this checklist.
This User Guide provides advocates with a step-by-step outline of how to actualize the vision of the National Youth Defense System Standards to equip and invest in youth defense teams to fight for the liberation of all youth. The User Guide outlines constitutional rights detailed in the System Standards, provides a checklist to assess the…
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…
The Wren Collective (2023). This independent report by the Wren Collective examines youth defense appointment practices in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and finds that juvenile court judges are routinely assigning private attorneys over public defenders to represent youth in juvenile court. Specifically, the public defender’s office was appointed to 25% of the juvenile delinquency cases in…
In January 2024, the National Center for Juvenile Justice released their annual report detailing data trends in juvenile courts across the country from 2005 to 2021. This report provides a national snapshot of various trends in delinquency cases, including key demographic patterns across age, gender, and race at various stages of case processing. Notably, in…
Outlines steps that states must take to comply with the minimum requirements of the U.S. Constitution to protect the rights of youth facing deprivations of liberty.
