News & Blog Posts

 

Youth Defense System Standards

A specialized corps of zealous youth defenders can unlock young people’s constitutional rights and wield the power to challenge and dismantle institutionalized oppression. For youth defenders to effectively do this work, states must invest in well-resourced youth defense delivery systems to comply with their constitutional mandates. The National Youth Defense System Standards outline steps states must take to satisfy the minimum requirements of the U.S. Constitution to fully safeguard the rights of youth in the juvenile legal system.

 

Announcing: New Resource Library

Over the past few months, we’ve been rebuilding our resource library to make it easier for defenders to find what they are looking for in our library. We have now finished our rebuild, and we are happy to announce that the new Resource Library is now live!

2022 Summit Top 10

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   We broadcast Summit from Puerto Rico so we could dance bombas, drink pina coladas, and revolutionize youth defense, and I can confirm we did all of the above. If you missed Summit, well, you missed a…

Gault Center op-ed in Teen Vogue

In this piece, HyeJi speaks directly to adolescents, to provide young people with empowering information to make change.

 

ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT

Advocating for children to be treated like children What’s At Stake Children are different than adults. Despite this self-evident truth, many people in the juvenile legal system treat children as small adults-subjecting them to harsher penalties without considering their development and opportunities for growth. Several…

 

How to celebrate the Gaultiversary

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   This is not a drill. May 15 is Gault Day! Mark your calendars.   Passover brings matzah, the Eid new clothes, Christmas brings my father commiserating with Ebenezer Scrooge while watching A Christmas Carol. Each holiday…

 

Casey KK’s American (Constitutional Right to Counsel) Top 10

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   How excited am I that we have our first Black female Supreme Court Justice who is a public defender? (Once a public defender, always a public defender; it’s blood in, blood out.) Very!   But not…

Dear K.K.

Dear K.K.,   My dear client has a love-hate relationship with his school district. He is currently at an alternative school. One day in January, he left his school and entered the main high school. He was let in by another student and bypassed the…

Top 10 Reasons why Appellate Attorneys are Bae

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   Once upon a time, there was a curly-haired defender who hated having to play Go Fish about discovery before a transfer hearing: “Prosecutor, do you have the statement from the store clerk mentioned in the police…

10 New Year’s Revolutions

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   Hey, so that holiday break was . . . different. I spent New Year’s Eve doing shots of Pepto with flat ginger ale chasers—a bubble gum guts cocktail (TM pending)—after a truly regrettable, but unforgettable, chicken…

 

12 Days of Yuletide Youth-Tide

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   Christmas songs are weird. Between people demanding figgy pudding and refusing to leave until they get some, to the wildly problematic Baby, It’s Cold Outside. (This maiden aunt’s mind is, indeed, vicious, but it’s because of…

 

10 Things I’m Thankful for as a Youth Defender

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   Several Thanksgivings ago, perhaps fueled by too many Hallmark movies, I suggested we go around the table and say what we were thankful for. I was feeling misty-eyed, Norman Rockwell, The Best Man Thanksgiving vibes until…

 

Tales from the Gault: 10 of the Scariest Things about the Juvenile Legal System

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   When I was in high school a group of friends and I went to track down “Hookerman” on some abandoned train tracks in Northwest New Jersey. The story was that a train conductor lost his hand…

Back to (Defending Youth in) School

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   I always loved back to school. It was a time of Lisa Frank, Trapper Keeper, and weirdly attractively smelling erasers. Teachers, the Dow Jones of school supplies, forecasted how many pencils I would need.   Back…

 

10 Things States Got Right in Youth Defense

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   Some people collect shot glasses or magnets from their travels. Me, I collect enviable local youth defense jurisprudence.   *Due to Covid restrictions, these states were visited via Zoom.   Washington Despite what my research—reading Twilight…

 

Keeping up with the Joneses: 10 Things I Kinda Maybe Don’t Hate About Jones

by Kristina “KK” Kersey, Sr. Youth Defense Counsel   When I first read Jones,2 I said a bad word. Now, this isn’t what we in the biz would call aberrant behavior, as I am from New Jersey. However, really, Kavanaugh?!   It is hard to…