Juvenile Law Commons^™

“One Of The Worst:” The School-To-Prison Pipeline In Richmond, Virginia, Cassie Powell

Law Student Publications

Virginia tops the nation in the rate of referrals of students to law enforcement, at three times the national average. Students with disabilities and children of color are far more likely to be referred. Some Richmond area school districts and local government leaders are taking steps to counteract this trend.

The American Bar Association Joint Task Force On Reversing The School-To-Prison Pipeline Preliminary Report, Sarah E. Redfield, Jason P. Nance

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2014, the American Bar Association (ABA) Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice (COREJ) turned its attention to the continuing failures in the education system where certain groups of students — for example, students of color, with disabilities, or LGBTQ — are disproportionately over- or incorrectly categorized in special education, are disciplined more harshly, including referral to law enforcement for minimal misbehavior, achieve at lower levels, and eventually drop or are pushed out of school, often into juvenile justice facilities and prisons — a pattern now commonly referred to as the School-to-Prison Pipeline. While this problem certainly is not new, …

Making Juvenile Justice More Humane And Effective, Julie Ellen Mcconnell

Law Faculty Publications

Long commutes, high costs and too much time away from family are among the most common frustration for workers in Virginia. But while those annoyances may be tolerable when it comes to our daily commutes, they have become an unfortunate feature of Virginia’s youth justice system, which confines hundreds of youth in large institutions far from their homes.

When young people have regular visits with their family and other members of the community, they have a much higher chance of being rehabilitated and successfully returning to those communities. Currently, many incarcerated youth in Virginia are held far from their families, …

Over-Disciplining Students, Racial Bias, And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Jason P. Nance

UF Law Faculty Publications

Over the last three decades, our nation has witnessed a dramatic change regarding how schools discipline children. Empirical evidence during this time period demonstrates that schools increasingly have relied on extreme forms of punishment such as suspensions, expulsions, referrals to law enforcement, and school-based arrests to discipline students for violations of school rules, including for low-level offenses. Many have referred to this disturbing trend of schools directly referring students to law enforcement or creating conditions under which students are more likely to become involved in the justice system—such as suspending or expelling them—as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Perhaps the most alarming …

Untangling The Web: Juvenile Justice In Indian Country, Addie C. Rolnick

Scholarly Works

The juvenile justice system in Indian country is broken. Native youth are vulnerable and traumatized. They become involved in the system at high rates, and they are more likely than other youth to be incarcerated and less likely to receive necessary health, mental-health, and education services. Congressional leaders and the Obama administration have made the needs of Indian country, especially improvement of tribal justice systems, an area of focus in recent years. The release of two major reports—one from a task force convened by the Attorney General to study violence and trauma among Native youth and the other from a …

Locked Up: Fear, Racism, Prison Economics, And The Incarceration Of Native Youth, Addie C. Rolnick

Scholarly Works

Native youth are disproportionately incarcerated, often for relatively minor offenses. One potential solution is to move more Native youth out of federal and state courts and invest in tribal juvenile justice systems. Tribal systems are assumed to be less punitive than nontribal ones, so greater tribal control should mean less incarceration. Little is known, however, about the role of incarceration in tribally run systems. This article examines available information on Native youth in tribal juvenile justice systems from 1998 to 2013. At least sixteen new secure juvenile facilities were built to house youth under tribal court jurisdiction, with federal investment …