Recent news

Juvenile Law Center’s work on costs, fines and fees for youth in the juvenile justice system and their families featured in national news; Philadelphia changes citywide policy on “child support” fine collection.

A new study by the American Pediatrics Association (APA) entitled, How Does Incarcerating Young People Affect their Adult Health Outcomes? indicates that youth who are incarcerated have poor health outcomes as they mature into adults.

Medicaid to 26 is a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which has allowed foster youth to stay insured after they leave care. It provides parity with other young people who have the option of staying on their parents’ plans until they are 26. This significant policy win has ensured that young people in vulnerable positions who need basic insurance and may experience health issues and/or disabilities have access to care.

Happy New Year! While we are preparing to confront new challenges in 2017, we ended 2016 with some important wins in some of our key issue areas: reducing transfer to adult court, ending juvenile life-without-parole and other extreme sentencing, and improving educational access and success for foster youth and justice system-involved youth.