An epidemic of questionable arrests by school police

Philadelphia has made a concerted effort toward reducing the number of youth being arrested in schools. Leadership, including the school police commissioner and district attorney, changed procedures so that youth, instead of getting arrested, are enrolled in diversion programs. While there’s been pushback from some law enforcement, early studies have pointed to a decline in arrests without a decline in safety.

Since 2007, Connecticut has taken major steps in juvenile justice reform – namely, the ages that youth are arrested or charged as adults. By moving 16 and 17 year olds out of the adult system and into the juvenile justice system, the state has seen a 40% decrease in new juvenile court cases, leading to less stigma and large taxpayer savings. With such success, the state now looks to make further reforms in the juvenile justice system.

Little attention is given to black men who are victims of gun violence but survive and need help. An organization in California is mobilizing all gun-violence victims to voice their opinion on criminal justice reform and support for victims.

Five years after South Dakota replaced a failing, punitive juvenile justice system that emphasized incarceration and probation with approaches focused on rehabilitation and local services for youth, the state's investment has paid off in far lower recidivism, incarceration, and expense. Counties have financial, justice, and moral incentives to follow the evidence of what works and help teens improve their lives. The state also keeps the data needed to track what is working. Neighboring Wyoming does the opposite on all counts, and it has the wrecked lives and high costs to show for it.

Hundreds of schools nationwide use restorative justice to respond to student disciplinary problems differently. In place of police, arrests, and suspensions, restorative practices emphasize conflict mediation through dialogue, asking how to hold people accountable without necessarily punishing them. Such programs have helped reduce suspensions and referrals to criminal or juvenile courts markedly, and reduced racial disparities. This story follows one man, a formerly incarcerated murder victim's brother, as he takes on the difficult task of introducing restorative practices to punishment-minded schools.

New York City's child welfare agency is trying once again to combat its "reputation for unjustly targeting low-income families of color" by piloting child care centers that are set up to help families feel respected and prepared to succeed. Although the impact of these programs is not yet clear, the approach is informed by past failures to deal with the systemic oppression that the agency has perpetuated.

After volunteering for the special olympics, Maria Omare decided children with disabilities in Kenya needed a space where they would be treated with dignity, care, and respect. So she rented a one-room space, and called it the The Action Foundation, a grassroots organization that provides social inclusion and education for children with disabilities. Eight years later, the organization has ballooned, “since 2012, the foundation has helped almost 240 children with various needs, large and small.”

In 2017, California's Continuum of Care (CCR) program began shifting money away from group homes for children in foster care, closing 300 homes in the first year. The money goes instead to recruiting more families to house children, who are newly eligible for extended care to age 25. The goal is to shrink a system that too often dooms children to homelessness on the streets and incarceration. While some clients have found the family love that a group home can't replicate, many lower-income families have struggled to meet the program's requirements, threatening its ultimate success.

After a school in Jefferson Parish gained national notoriety for having an 8th grader sent to juvenile jail for six days for tossing Skittles on a school bus, the area's schools reformed school discipline by adopting a system of mediation and community conflict resolution based on restorative justice principles. In the first year, one middle school's suspensions have dropped by more than half. Racial disparities in school suspensions or arrests have led many other schools to follow a similar path. Success seems to depend on making restorative justice central to the mission, not just a disciplinary add-on.

After pressure from activists, a slew of countries have passed laws that ban female genital mutilation, the practice of cutting of a girl’s external genitalia. However, in some places like the Iraqi Kurdistan region, the law was not enforced and was met with stiff opposition from religious leaders. “When it comes to FGM and child marriage, you’re changing perceptions so it takes a while, and these practices have been going on for generation after generation so it takes time to end them.”