News & Blog Posts
Fall 2024 Resource Library Updates
The Gault Center has been regularly updating our Resource Library, where you will find up-to-date youth defense resources to enhance your practice and advocacy. In this post are some notable publications from the past couple of months that may be of interest to youth defense advocates.
Summer 2024 Resource Library Updates
The Gault Center has been regularly updating our Resource Library, where you will find up-to-date youth defense resources to enhance your practice and advocacy. In this post are some notable publications from the past couple of months that may be of interest to youth defense advocates.
Spring 2024 Resource Library Updates
The Gault Center has been regularly updating our Resource Library, where you will find up-to-date youth defense resources to enhance your practice and advocacy. In this post are some notable publications from the past couple of months that may be of interest to youth defense advocates.
Youth Defense System Standards
A specialized corps of zealous youth defenders can unlock young people’s constitutional rights and wield the power to challenge and dismantle institutionalized oppression. For youth defenders to effectively do this work, states must invest in well-resourced youth defense delivery systems to comply with their constitutional mandates. The National Youth Defense System Standards outline steps states must take to satisfy the minimum requirements of the U.S. Constitution to fully safeguard the rights of youth in the juvenile legal system.
Announcing: New Resource Library
Over the past few months, we’ve been rebuilding our resource library to make it easier for defenders to find what they are looking for in our library. We have now finished our rebuild, and we are happy to announce that the new Resource Library is now live!
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…
Gault Center op-ed in Teen Vogue
In this piece, HyeJi speaks directly to adolescents, to provide young people with empowering information to make change.
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…
How 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…
Casey 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…
Dear 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…
Top 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…
10 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…
12 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…
10 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…
Tales 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…
Back 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…
10 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…
Keeping 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…