Recent news

Juvenile Law Center submitted a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the human rights implications of imprisoning children in adult facilities in the United States. The IACHR, a regional body that ensures compliance with regional standards and international corpus juris (or "body of law"), will hold a hearing on this issue on March 11.

Our letter argues that children should not be incarcerated in adult facilities for the following reasons.

Juvenile Law Center, with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and in collaboration with Open Society Foundations, Pennsylvania Academic and Career/Technical Training Alliance, Racial Justice Initiative, and Robert F. Kennedy Juvenile Justice Collaborative, is convening regional meetings in cities including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta to discuss the quality of education for youth in facilities. Leaders in education and juvenile justice from each region will strive to identify promising and effective strategies for improving the quality of education for youth in the juvenile justice system.

On January 28-29, Juvenile Law Center hosted "Trauma and Resilience: A New Look at Legal Advocacy for Youth in the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems." More than 35 national experts from the legal, mental health, and public health fields gathered to discuss the effects of trauma—particularly stemming from violence, both on a personal level and within economically disadvantaged communities—on youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Juvenile Law Center's new mobile site—at www.jlc.org on your mobile browser—provides faster access to our most-visited sections.

Photo via scot2342 on flickr

Congress has just sent a bill to the President that will make it easier for foster youth to be educated. While congressional partisanship on the fiscal cliff has dominated the headlines for the past few weeks, a bill to help foster children avoid falling off another kind of cliff has garnered unanimous bipartisan support and now awaits the President’s signature.

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo gave final approval to a $17.75 million settlement in the Luzerne County, PA “kids for cash” cases with real estate developer Robert Mericle.

“While no amount of money can possibly restore what these children and families lost, this settlement validates their losses and will hopefully restore their faith in our justice system,” says Marsha Levick, Deputy Director and Chief Counsel at Juvenile Law Center.

Today is a dark day for Pennsylvania’s children. After spending the last two years enacting a series of measures to improve how we treat our children, Pennsylvania took a giant step backward in adopting a punitive and unreasonable law incorrectly stigmatizing youth for life. Act 111, which goes into effect today, unnecessarily places certain juveniles on a lifetime sex offender registry.

Act 111 was enacted in response to the federal Adam Walsh Act, passed by Congress in 2006 after the high-profile abduction and murder of a child. States that do not comply with the Act are at risk of losing 10% of their funding under the Justice Assistance Grant program. The Act expanded the breadth of registration and notification laws for all individuals convicted of sex offenses. Most importantly, it subjects youth who are adjudicated delinquent to the same registration requirements as convicted adult sex offenders.

The events and subsequent revelations of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre leave us gasping in horror, momentarily speechless. “There are no words…” seemed to be the collective sentiment of so many. But as we emerge from our shock, we realize that there are words. Lots of them. We, as a nation, simply choose not to listen.

"A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members," said Mahatma Ghandi.

Our weakest members include our children, our citizens with mental health issues, our poor, our sick, our disabled, our elderly – our friends and families and neighbors.

Those of us who work at Juvenile Law Center grieve deeply for the families of the Newtown children who were so brutally murdered.  We are sadly reminded of members of the Juvenile Law Center family who were murdered by gun violence this past year.

On Tuesday, December 11, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, held the first-ever congressional hearing on how to effectively end the “school-to-prison pipeline”—the practice of criminalizing student misconduct that increases the chances that students, particularly low-income students of color, will end up involved in the justice system.

On December 10, 2012, the Court adopted new Rules of Appellate Procedure that provide for quick review of out-of-home placement in delinquency matters. Because juveniles often complete their time in placement in less time than it typically takes to process an appeal from an adjudication, new Rule 1770 provides an immediate mechanism for juveniles who are adjudicated delinquent to have their out-of-home placement reviewed by the appellate court prior to formal appellate review of the adjudication or other matters.