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In The News
Michael Buffer, Hazleton Standard Speaker •
Blog post
Juvenile Law Center,

For virtually all young adults, making the transition from adolescence to independent adulthood is challenging. Luckily, most of us have parents to help guide us through the transition. Most foster youth aren’t so lucky.

In The News
Carolyn Davis, Philadelphia Inquirer •

Nationwide, more and more taxpayer dollars are spent to put children behind bars while fewer and fewer dollars are invested in education. A cost-benefit analysis of corrections spending shows that our country is moving in the wrong direction. According to the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) report, “The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies Make Good Fiscal Sense,” our nation spends an average of $241 per day, or $88,000 annually, for every youth in a juvenile facility. Conversely, 2011 census data show the annual per student cost for a public school education was about $10,600.

“What were you thinking?!” As former teenagers, we’ve all been asked this question—and probably more than once.  

Teens act carelessly and impulsively for several reasons. First and foremost, numerous scientific studies (like the ones found here and here) confirm that teenaged brains are simply not mature, and key functional areas of their brains—primarily the frontal lobe, where decision-making and concentration are governed —are not fully developed until early adulthood. Kids are also much more susceptible to peer pressure than adults. They don’t recognize risks, and when they do, they evaluate risks differently from adults.

In The News
John Seewer and Kantele Franko, Associated Press •

Amanda Lorah, one of the youth featured in the film “Kids for Cash,” grew up with her father and struggled in school to overcome her perceived social stigma of having a single-parent family. Friendships mattered to Amanda.

When one of those friendships ended badly and the girl became verbally abusive, Amanda fought with the girl in the school gymnasium. At 14, she was arrested and taken to juvenile court, where she was charged with aggravated assault. After a hasty adjudication by then Judge Ciavarella, she was immediately shackled and taken away from her father to a secure juvenile detention facility. Amanda spent most of the next 5 years in placement in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system, terrified and traumatized by her separation from family and friends.

In The News
Marsha Levick, The Huffington Post Blog •

In an exciting step forward toward implementing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama nationwide, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on March 12, 2014 that courts must take into consideration the age and other unique attributes of adolescents or young offenders before sentencing them to life without the possibility of parole. Juvenile Law Center advocated for this requirement in our amicus curiae brief to the Ohio Supreme Court in State v. Long.

As we mentioned in a recent Lessons from "Kids for Cash" blog, Hillary Transue was 14 years old when she created a fake MySpace page for her assistant princiapl in Luzerne County, PA. When she was contacted by law enforcement officials several months later, she hardly remembered that it existed. The police officer assured Hillary's mother, Laurene, that the court would go easy on her daughter. But when Laurene contacted Juvenile Law Center in 2007, her daughter had been removed from school and was serving a 90-day sentence in a wilderness camp for delinquent girls.