John Lam – Page 3

Keep kids out of the system

July 19, 2018 by John Lam

Eddie Herena and David le

Several counties in the U.S. have implemented a new program that has helped to keep kids out of the juvenile justice system, according to The Crime Report.

Called “System of Care,” the program is “changing the way the county addresses juvenile crime” since it was launched in November, wrote Anne Jungen in Wisconsin’s La Crosse Tribune.

The program focuses on kids in school. System of Care “fills a gap between how schools handle misconduct and what the juvenile justice system provides by addressing the [troublesome or acting out] behavior without a ticket or arrest,” the Tribune reported.

The purpose of System of Care is to hold students accountable.

“It’s not about being soft on crime. It’s about being smart on crime,” said Curt Teff, La Crosse School District supervisor of Integrated Supports, who helped develop the program.

The urge to create this program stemmed from La Crosse County’s high juvenile arrest rate, which was higher than the state average, according to a study by the Carey Group, a consulting firm retained in 2008 to examine the county’s juvenile justice system.

“…childhood adversity and stress can chemically change the way our brain works,” said Dr. Robert Anda, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and developer of the Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACE survey to The New York Times in “Linking Childhood Trauma to Prison’s Revolving Door” nytimes.com/national

Some of the juvenile arrests reported included:

Disorderly conduct
62 percent arrests occurring on weekdays
25 percent of arrests were at public schools
One-third of cases referred to criminal justice system resulted in being counseled without formal charges

“Kids are neurologically wired to do stupid things. When we arrested them, we were contributing to making them worse,” said Judge Steven Teske, who helped established a System of Care in Clayton County, Ga.

Systems of Care was founded in 2003 and has reduced juvenile arrest in schools by 71 percent, while graduation rates rose 30 percent, according to Judge Teske,

“The System of Care seeks to help kids who need it,” said Teske. “We identify causes for the behavior and match them with resources so they can develop coping skills that will help them function in school.”

https://sanquentinnews.com/girls-color-overlooked-school-prison-pipeline/

Native American Girls are at Higher Risk for Imprisonment

https://sanquentinnews.com/maryland-govenor-moves-grant-juvenile-offenders-parole/

Youth offender who realizes opportunity a little too late

June 11, 2018 by John Lam

Andrew Joseph Biovin with NFL player Brendon Ayanbadejo

Many youth offenders who find themselves incarcerated at San Quentin fail to recognize the opportunities available to them and end up transferred to higher level institutions due to behavioral infractions.

“I didn’t realize what I had here in San Quentin,” said Andrew Joseph Biovin, 21, a youth offender who was deemed a program failure and was transferred out of San Quentin. “Now I want to go to programs and learn all I can. Now, it’s real. Now I care.”

In 2013, a new law AB1276, allowed new offenders between the ages of 18 and 23 an opportunity to serve their sentences at a lower level security prison like San Quentin, to have access to free on-site college programs like Patten University and a plethora of other rehabilitative and vocational programs that are available.

Miguel Sifuentes, a Kid CAT member and facilitator of a youth offender group called “BE-IT” (Benefiting Each Individual Together) works at Receive and Release (R&R) and, in that role, has a unique perspective on how some youths are coping at San Quentin, how some succeed and some fail. He had two interactions with Biovin at R&R and observed a difference in the youth’s attitude between the two.

“The first time he seemed conflicted about being transferred out. The second time I saw Biovin was months later when he was on a layover in R&R, being transferred to another institution. This time, I immediately recognized something was different about him. He had matured somehow in the months since I last saw him.”

“Youth issues are especially close to my heart because I am a youth offender; when I first entered into the system, I had to go to a Level 4 prison due to my age and crime,” Sifuentes said. “I understand how some of these young people are trying to adhere to a belief system, and [have] normalized acts of criminal thinking and fail to see the opportunities to change due to peer pressure.

“I hope that I can share Biovin’s story so that youths reading this story can learn from his mistakes.

“Biovin had disciplinary problems that had invalidated his stay here, and his story is not unique. In my experience as many as a few hundred young men have gone through a similar pattern, many of whom will not make it back to a lower level like San Quentin,” continued Sifuentes.

“I made a giant mistake, and now I want to help others not make the same one by sharing my story”

“During Biovin’s second time at R&R, we spoke for about an hour and a half, through a small tray slot in the holding cell where Biovin was in. He told me that he was previously in San Quentin for about a year and a half and is now on his way to a Level 4 (maximum security prison) after brief transfers to a level 3 (medium security) at California’s Men’s Colony and Vacaville. There he had additional disciplinary problems and is facing the possibility of a criminal prosecution.”

Like many youth offenders, Biovin was exposed to some limited rehabilitative programs at San Quentin but found it difficult to completely break away from old behaviors.

Among the disciplinary infractions incurred by youth offenders are: fighting, drug possession and/or failed drug tests, cell phone possession, and a “high speed chase” (running from staff) usually in reaction to one of the above.

Biovin was no different. “I used to say to the ‘O.G.’ lifers, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’” he said. “Everything they told me now is real. Now I see with my own eyes that other places ain’t cool.

“I messed up, I wish I could go back, do well, and make a different decision. Now I understand, I threw away my opportunity,” said Biovin.

“I made a giant mistake, and now I want to help others not make the same one by sharing my story. Now, I understand why lifers want to give back because I want to help others avoid the same problems I had too.”

In response to Biovin’s comments, Sifuentes said, “I was sad to see him in trouble, and yet tremendously happy to see his newfound insight. He’s everything I hope a young person could know for him/herself and say. Yet it came at a high cost. I hope these other young guys ‘get it’ before it is too late.”

Deportation Crimes Explained

Youth offenders graduate Pre-Apprentice Program

Valley State Prison holds inaugural YOP graduation

https://sanquentinnews.com/youth-offender-mix-tape-captures-generational-trauma-incarceration/

CA senators bill baring juveniles from adult courts

June 11, 2018 by John Lam

Two California senators introduce a bill that would bar prosecutors from trying juveniles 15 years old and younger in adult court.

The proposal that would “bar prosecutors from asking that minors to be tried in adult court if they were 14 or 15 years old at the time of their crime….(is) one of several in a package of bills introduced by Sens. Holly J. Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens),” The Los Angeles Times reported.

Other bills proposed by Mitchell and Lara would repeal a one-year sentence enhancement for prior felony convictions and allow judges discretion to strike prior serious felony convictions that may require defendants to serve an additional five years in prison, according to the Times.

More than a third of millennial say that if a man compliments a woman’s looks it is harassment, according to a recent survey by The Economist/YouGov reports The New York Times 1-17-18.

The goal of these new legislations “is not about slapping a wrist and sending (kids) home,” said Mitchell. “It is about acknowledging that we as adults, as a society of adults, have failed you, our systems have failed you.”

Standing in opposition to keeping youth offenders out of adult court and rescinding sentence enhancements are law enforcement lobbyists and Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula).

“According to a RAND analysis, every $1 invested in such [inmate] education generates at least $4 in economic return,” reports Fast Company.

“The state typically spends $71,000 a year to house an inmate. It costs about $5,000 total to help put one [incarcerated] student through community college”, reports Fast Company.

The criminal justice system has undergone enormous change in the last six years, said Cory Salzillo, legislative director for the California State Sheriffs’ Association.

“We are not giving the system enough time to adjust,” Salzillo said, pointing to the passage of Proposition 57 and other efforts to reduce the state’s population.

In 2016, California voters approved Prop. 57, which in part prohibits prosecutors from charging youths in adult court without a judge’s approval. The California Supreme Court, affirming a lower-court ruling in February, found that provision could retroactively apply to pending cases.

Stone, citing a case of 15-year-old in Alabama who beat another man unconscious with a baseball bat, said, “There is a narrow window (of defendants) who should not be kept in the juvenile justice system.”

“Tennessee is 17.1 percent Black, but Blacks make up 69 percent of all drug-free school zone offenders…” REASON Magazine, January 2018

Testifying before a senate public safety committee in April on the proposals, Frankie Guzman, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, relayed his own experience being in the juvenile justice system.

Guzman said, when he was 14, prosecutors labeled him a hardened criminal after he and a friend brandished handguns as they held up a liquor store. As his case dragged on, he was allowed to remain in the juvenile justice system, where he had access to education and counseling.

“I learned, I really learned, what I did wrong and why,” he said. “I am not an exception but a representation of what happens when young people who commit the most serious crimes get the support and services that they need.”

Youth Justice Coalition Survey

https://sanquentinnews.com/girls-color-overlooked-school-prison-pipeline/

Keep kids out of the system

Life of crime overturned by positive choices

May 26, 2018 by John Lam

Younger brother Tony Douangmalalay, niece Caylen, Mother Pat, nephew C.J. and younger brother Caven

A variety of rehabilitative programs, including dance, helped Anouthinh Pangthong turn his life around despite a rocky youth and 21 years in prison since the age of 15.

“Life in prison can become tedious, doing the same thing over and over. Sparks of violence would break the monotony. When an opportunity came to do something different through dancing, I jumped at the chance. My life has since been anything but ordinary,” said Pangthong. “Dancing really saved my life.”

Pangthong, known to his friends as Choy, is the latest Kid CAT member to be found suitable for parole.

Like many youth offenders of Asian descent who have been incarcerated since the ‘90s, Choy was an immigrant born in a refugee camp in Thailand, when his single mother fled her home country of Laos during war.

When he and his mother arrived in the United States, Choy was only 7 months old. His mother remarried and gave birth to two younger brothers. She and Choy gained citizenship.

“According to a RAND analysis, every $1 invested in such [inmate] education generates at least $4 in economic return,” reports Fast Company.

“The state typically spends $71,000 a year to house an inmate. It costs about $5,000 total to help put one [incarcerated] student through community college”, reports Fast Company.

“I didn’t have much of a relationship with my father growing up,” said Choy. “He was an alcoholic and gambler.”

As a child, Choy often served as an interpreter for his mother. When he translated incorrectly, his mother would often verbally and physically punish him.

“My whole family has been waiting over 20 years to welcome him back home and now it’s finally here”

“She made me feel worthless, and it really affected how I felt and perceived myself, and I carried this throughout most of my adult life,” said Choy.

Because of the migratory nature of his stepfather’s work, Choy and his family moved around often into crime-ridden neighborhoods.

“Although I lived in a bad neighborhood, it embraced me by giving me the attention and affection that I didn’t have at home,” said Choy.

At 8 years old, Choy began serving as a lookout for neighborhood crack dealers and was paid a dollar each time he notified the dealer of an incoming cop car.

“I would take that dollar and go play video games at the liquor store,” said Choy. “By the age of 11, I started to sell crack cocaine and later joined a gang at 12.”

The only saving grace Choy remembered from his childhood was playing football.

Anouthinh Panthong at age 12

“Playing sports was the best decision I ever made, football taught me about teamwork, responsibility and building camaraderie,” said Choy. “But when my family decided to move away from Willow when I turned 12, everything changed. I stopped playing sports and embraced the streets instead.”

Choy began to get into fights at schools and was ultimately expelled for bringing a knife.

Three weeks before turning 16, Choy made a horrendous decision that would end a life, and send him to prison.

“On the night of my crime, I led three younger friends to steal a car, and I ended up murdering the man I was trying to rob.”

After two weeks on the lam, the police arrested Choy. He later pled guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years-to-life.

“My mom blamed herself for what I had done. I felt I had to take accountability for my actions and show her that it wasn’t her fault but mine alone, so I pled guilty,” said Choy.

For most of his incarceration, Choy straddled the fence. While working to accumulate vocational skills, he sold methamphetamines, tobacco, and cellular phones.

As a result, Choy accumulated 11 disciplinary write-ups.

“In 2010, I was in solitary confinement for a cellphone possession, when I made a decision to change my life,” said Choy. “Still my change didn’t come easy, it took years.”

Intimate partner violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime. One in three women and one in four men in the United States has experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. Husbands are five times more likely to kill wives than vice versa. A third of female homicide victims are killed by an intimate male partner or ex-partner, according to FBI reports. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ndv0312.pdf

When Choy arrived at San Quentin in 2012, he renounced his criminal lifestyle and availed himself of many self-help groups and education. He also became a program facilitator for Criminals and Gangmembers Anonymous, Kid CAT’s First Step curriculum, ROOTS (Restoring Our Original True Selves), and mentoring youth through SQUIRES (San Quentin Utilizing Inmate Resources, Experiences and Studies). He especially relished his roles in Artistic Ensemble and Shakespeare plays.

“I really regretted taking so long to change,” said Choy. “It took writing out my crime in detail to understand the magnitude of what I’d done – especially the harm that I caused to my community of Stockton.”

In 2016, Choy spoke about his offense at an event with survivors of crime. In attendance was Michael Tubbs, mayor of Stockton, where he had committed his crime.

After the event, Tubbs told Choy, “We forgive you. Now come back and help us improve; you are part of the solution.”

On Aug. 8, during his first parole board hearing, Choy was found suitable for parole.

At a recent event at San Quentin, Choy’s brother, Tony Douangmalalay, remarked about Choy’s pending release. “I’m so proud of my older brother and the journey he has made to become who he is today. Now all he talks about is his goals of helping kids and doing outreach in our community.

“My whole family has been waiting over 20 years to welcome him back home and now it’s finally here.”

A nightmare for one incarcerated dreamer

Out of prison but not yet free of ICE

Reforms in Illinois juvenile system blocked by youth assaults

May 8, 2018 by John Lam

Million Prisoner’s March

Reforms in Illinois’ juvenile justice system are under attack by prosecutors who are responding to a steady flow of staff complaints to law enforcement over youth assaults.

“State officials and juvenile justice advocates say the prosecutions are fueled, in part, by employees’ resistance to the statewide reforms,” ProPublica reported.

Workers at the Harrisburg Illinois Youth Center have sought more criminal charges for assaults on staff over the past two years than employees at the state’s four other juvenile facilities combined.

Highlighting the systemic issues is the behavior of three youths: Jaylan Banks, 17, who punched a guard; David Hayes, 18, who spat in a guard’s face; and Lavell Staples, 18, accused of shoving a guard.

A few years ago, these incidents would have resulted in a loss of privileges, earned time in solitary confinement, or added time of 30 to 180 days to their juvenile sentences.

In these situations, however, the authorities filed criminal complaints with the Harrisburg police. Upon conviction, Staples received a four-year term, Hayes sentenced to six years, and Banks received eight years.

“If I didn’t catch this case, I would have been home already,” said Staples. “They sent me down here so they can throw me away.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois accuses the Harrisburg staff of creating an “alternative correctional system” to drive a steady flow of prosecution for what it describes as “trivial” incidents.

In response to the public outcry over guards filing police reports on juvenile detainees, Illinois guard union representative Eddie Caumiant said, “It’s their right to seek justice and press charges.”

“People have to be responsible for their actions,” one guard told ProPublica, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I don’t want to go to work and get hit. If I was at home and somebody hit me, I’d press charges.”

Prosecutorial zeal also contributes to harsh court sentences, according to ProPublica.

“This is a pretty simple situation as far as my role in it,” said Jayson Clark, Saline County’s attorney who prosecutes Harrisburg offenders.

“This county will prosecute you for aggravated battery if you lay a hand on a guard. The fact that they’re in a juvenile facility…doesn’t make them any less culpable.”

In response, attorney Jennifer Vollen-Katz, the executive director of the prison watchdog group John Howard Association, said Harrisburg’s staff may have legitimate complaints, but sending the young men to prison is not the way to address them.

“The outcome of these cases are so dramatically out of sync with anything that resembles justice. Six years for spitting? We are sacrificing lives to make a point, and that’s simply not OK.”

Prison’s newspaper celebrates 100th edition

Deportation Crimes Explained

Black incarceration on the decline

May 8, 2018 by John Lam

The percentages of Blacks and Whites being incarcerated are converging. Nationally, Black incarceration rates are dropping, while Whites are on the increase, according to a Marshall Project analysis of yearly reports by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The report found that between 2000 and 2015, the imprisonment rate of Black men dropped by more than 24 percent. At the same time, the White male rate increased slightly.

The narrowing of the gap between White and Black incarceration rates is “definitely optimistic news,” John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, told The Washington Post.

Among women, the trend is even more dramatic. From 2000 to 2015, the Black female imprisonment rate dropped by nearly 50 percent. During the same period, the White female rate rose by 53 percent.

The racial disparity between Black and White women’s incarceration was once 6 to 1, according to the Sentencing Project. Now, it’s 2 to 1.

“If we want to continue or accelerate [that trend], we need to acknowledge it and figure out why it’s happening,” said Adam Gelb, director of the public safety performance program at The Pew Charitable Trusts and an expert on prison data.

“Tennessee is 17.1 percent Black, but Blacks make up 69 percent of all drug-free school zone offenders…”REASON Magazine, January 2018

Prison system experts attribute the narrowing gap between Black and White incarceration to a number of reasons, including a general decline in crime and arrests; a significant drop in violent crime, which means fewer substantial prison sentences; a shift away from crack and marijuana toward meth and opioids in the war on drugs; and, the fact that criminal justice reform has occurred in cities, where more Black people live, while less progressive change has occurred in rural areas.

Another possibility: White people have faced declining socioeconomic prospects, leading to an increase in law-breaking among that population. From 2000 to 2009, Black incarceration for property offenses fell 9 percent, while White incarceration for those crimes increased 21 percent.

“African American families comprise 42 percent of welfare recipients…but are 59 percent of poor people shown on television are African American.” “Sustaining Stereotypes” by Lanien Frush Holt in QUILL Summer 2018 www.spj.org/quill

Even so, racial inequality in the prison system remains a serious issue. At the current rate, the disparities would not fully disappear for many decades, according to the Washington Post.

“Until we learn the true value of the lives we have wasted, and until we truly reckon with our nation’s history,” Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) told the Marshall Project in 2015, “… we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of reform and retrenchment—periods of apparent progress followed by the creation of new systems of racial and social control.”

http://sanquentinnews.com/optionb-org-support-group-overcoming-effects-incarceration/

2017 domestic extremist-related killings

Race Still a Factor in Determining Police Stops

Advocates raise issues regarding incarcerated women

May 8, 2018 by John Lam

Women locked up behind bars in a United States jail

Issues regarding incarcerated females have been raised by five female criminal justice advocates at the 2018 American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The title of the CPAC panel: “Dignity for Incarcerated Women: Is It Really Necessary to Shackle Women in Labor?”

“People wonder if this is really a significant issue,” said Holly Harris, executive director of the U.S. Justice Action Network. “Yes. It is traumatizing not just for the woman giving birth but it also impacts the family and certainly there is research that says it impacts the bond between the mother and child.”

Only 21 states have outlawed the practice of shackling imprisoned women in labor.

“In some cases, the babies are taken away from the mothers without the mother having the chance to even hold her newborn baby,” the Christian Post reported.

“Half of the state’s foster-care population is made up of children with opioid-addicted parents,” reports Bloomberg according to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican. BUSINESSWEEK.com Oct. 9, 2017

According to Harris, about one in four female inmates is either pregnant or has a child younger than the age of one.

Other issues raised by the panel:

Lack of access to children.

“Most of the women that I have encountered had substance abuse issues. It’s really, really hard to get the woman to focus in on her substance abuse issues when she doesn’t know where her kids are,” said Kathleen Dennehy, former head of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections.

Females face a lack of necessary hygiene items, such as sanitary pads

“We have been working on bills in some states to make sure that women have the sanitary items they need,” said Jessica Jackson Sloan, a human rights lawyer and the co-founder of #cut50, a national movement to lower the U.S. incarceration rate.

Sloan also shared the story of one of her employees, a formerly incarcerated woman. “She knew what it was like to not have enough sanitary items that she would literally have to choose between bartering to get them or just staying in her cell for a week at a time when it was that time of the month.”

Women’s lack of privacy from male guards while they are in the shower or receiving medical attention

“We had one woman who was providing testimony in California that she went into medical and had a male guard see her in a state of undress and how that traumatized her from ever wanting to go back to medical for the next 10 years she was incarcerated,” said Sloan.

Policies vary by state and prison, but there are some efforts to fix these injustices. According to the Christian Post, Kentucky is working on a bill to ban shackling during labor and mandate appropriate nutrition for pregnant inmates.

Sloan spoke of a California bill to “get male guards out of bathrooms in medical areas.” She also said that Arizona had passed a bill to increase the monthly ration for sanitary pads and toilet paper for female inmates.

Kate Trammel, the senior state campaign manager for Prison Fellowship, said that although people were working for change in many states, she doesn’t think these female inmate issues are as high profile as they should be. “I work in state policy, and I rarely hear it discussed…But it is very much a real problem.”

Trammel added that because most females are in prison for non-violent crimes, they will benefit from the current push to reduce mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses. But female issues that don’t apply to men are apt to get left behind.

Prison reform could free 30,000 inmates says CSJ

Female inmates help battle fires

California’s early release programs ACP

States seeking lethal injection cocktails from black market

May 8, 2018 by John Lam

Lethal injection chair in Texas’ Huntsville Penitentiary

Some states have turned to the black market to obtain scarce lethal injection drugs that have caused botched executions, according to www.Reason.com.

According to the report by C.J. Ciaramella, investigative journalists found that, “these states have turned to untraceable cash transactions, unregulated pharmacies, and overseas scammers to buy drugs to fill the veins of condemned inmates.”

Some experimental combinations have even resulted in botched executions.

Further complicating the matter, Virginia and 14 other states have passed secrecy laws that may hide the identities of pharmacies that provide death penalty drugs.

“Even in the cocaine and crack days, people didn’t die like this.” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 12-18-17 Cmdr. Thomas Fallon of Hamilton County, Ohio on opioid epidemic.

“Officials argue such secrecy keeps the flow of necessary drugs unimpeded—but it also leaves death row inmates, their lawyers, the press, and the public in the dark about how governments are wielding the gravest of their powers,” Ciaramella reported.

Some other findings:

In an attempt to avoid leaving a paper trail, an Oklahoma state official drove across state lines and purchased execution drugs from a pharmacy using petty cash.

Despite a U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on importing sodium thiopental, the active ingredient in executions, three states paid an India company, Harris Pharma, run by a man with no pharmaceutical background, to send the drugs to them.

More than one-third of the national’s 9 percent increase in homicides occurred in Chicago. “Homicides Are a Neighborhood Problem” THE NEW YORK TIMES 12-28-17

Nebraska ordered $54,000 worth of the drug from Harris—enough to perform 300 executions. The FDA confiscated the shipment, leaving Nebraskan taxpayers on the hook.

Due to the difficulty of obtaining Midazolam and sodium thiopental. Nebraska is looking into using a never-before-tried mix of four drugs: diazepam (Valium), potassium chloride, cisatracurium besylate (a paralytic, banned for animal euthanasia) and fentanyl citrate, the super-strong opiate responsible for a wave of overdoses in the U.S.

Death Row inmate freed after serving more than 25 years

Detailed report about prison healthcare

Committee recommends better youth treatment

March 20, 2018 by John Lam

A committee made sweeping recommendations on the use of pepper spray, shackling, visitation rights and vegetarian meal options for incarcerated youths.

“This time around was historic; we are advocating for changes that have never been addressed before,” said Israel Villa, a formerly incarcerated youth and program and policy coordinator for Motivating Individual Leadership for Public Advancement.

The Executive Steering Committee of the State Board of State and Community Corrections held a panel with youth advocates in November in preparation for a Feb. 8 meeting, when the full board will vote on revising statewide regulations for incarcerated youth.

N.A. Chaderjian youth graduates

“Executive Steering Committee meetings are designed to provide direction and…identifying critical issues, providing direction to workgroups that propose revisions and making a final recommendation to the full board,” the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange reported.

The executive committee recommended the following:

Facilities must document the use of pepper spray on youth.

This requirement is a step in the right direction but using pepper spray should not be tolerated, said Sara Kruzan, a formerly incarcerated youth and program coordinator at Healing Dialogue and Action.

New regulations would require individualized assessment before the use of shackles on young detainees.

“I’m concerned about who will be making that discretion regarding shackles and why we are still OK with shackles being used on our youth,” said Kruzan.

Facilities should be required to process requests for vegetarian meals

Supportive adults should not be barred from visiting incarcerated youth because of adults’ conviction history.

These regulations should guide facilities to treat youth in a trauma-informed manner, rather than with a punitive approach, said Kruzan.

“In my case, my trauma was never acknowledged, and the phrase ‘child sex-trafficking survivor’ was never used. No one knew how to handle me, so I was criminalized.”

Project Avary sets benefit march

USSC rules bail hearings undocumented immigrants

California juvenile facilities ill-equipped to handle disabled youths

New law stops interrogating juveniles

March 20, 2018 by John Lam

Correctional Officer J. Robinson checks an at-risk youth at San Quentin’s main entrance.

A new law makes it illegal for peace officers to interrogate youths 15 years old or younger without first allowing them to consult with an attorney.

“The bill would require that a youth 15 years of age or younger consult with legal counsel in person, by telephone, or by video conference prior to a custodial interrogation and before waiving any of the above specified rights,” the bill states.

The law was sponsored by California Senator Ricardo Lara.

“People under 18 years of age have lesser ability as compared to adults to comprehend the meaning of their rights and the consequences of waiver,” the bill states.

“Additionally, a large body of research has established that adolescent thinking tend to either ignore or discount future outcomes and implications, and disregard long-term consequences of important decisions.”

The bill was approved by the governor on Oct. 11, 2017.

Deportation Crimes Explained

Young offenders learn expression through poetry

Privacy advocates suffer setback with DNA collection