2025 End of Year Resource Library Updates
The Gault Center has been regularly updating our Resource Library, where you will find cutting edge youth defense resources to enhance your practice and advocacy. Below are some notable publications from the past few months that may be of interest to youth defense advocates. Please note that some of these resources are only available to registered youth defense users; to access, please log in or register on the Gault Center’s website.
Also, we wanted to share that the 2025 Edition of the Trial Manual for Defense Attorneys in Juvenile Delinquency Cases developed by Randy Hertz, Martin Guggenheim, & Anthony G. Amsterdam is available on our website. This Trial Manual has 39 chapters and offers a detailed examination of how to handle each step of a youth defense case.
From the Gault Center:
Beehive Buzz: Emerging Strategies from Summit 2025
In October 2025, the Gault Center convened over three hundred youth defense lawyers and advocates at our annual Youth Defender Leadership Summit. Together, we practiced the cultivation of community in service of building a more just, more liberated, and more human humanity for all children and for us all. This resource captures the shared learnings and collective action strategies that youth defenders built together during Summit covering ways we can lean into the strength of identities and defend against hypervigilance in transfer, gun charges, and digital surveillance. In addition, the Gault Center hosted a Summit policy meeting and created a companion Beehive Buzz policy resource outlining key legislative wins and trends from the past year, including Michigan raising the age to 18 and California creating a one-year cap on juvenile probation, and policy goals for the year ahead, including increasing funding for community-based alternatives and shifting narratives around young people and community safety.
Five Years Later: An Update on the Kansas Youth Defense Assessment 2025
The Gault Center released an update on the state of youth defense in Kansas, which centers the perspectives and experiences of young people impacted by the juvenile legal system, through a collaborative effort with Progeny, a youth-adult partnership in Kansas, TerraLuna Collaborative, a research consulting group, and Mulberry Art Gallery, which focuses on supporting emerging youth artists of color. Youth leaders at Progeny interviewed other young people who had experienced the juvenile legal system in Kansas about their experiences in the system and specifically with their youth defense attorney to shed light on the gaps, challenges, and opportunities to improve youth defense in the state. The interview findings were then shared with youth artists, who developed artwork (highlighted throughout the report) to represent the collective experiences of young people in the juvenile legal system across the state. This report powerfully outlines the lived experiences of young people through their own words about client communication, shackling, case preparation, courtroom experiences, hearings, costs and fees, and racial justice advocacy. This report serves as an important tool for youth leaders and policy advocates to improve the youth defense delivery system in Kansas and offers an example for other jurisdictions working with or interested in partnering with youth leaders to drive policy change based on youth experiences and perspectives.
Throughout this year, the Gault Center has been building out our Immigration Tip Sheet Series to guide those working in the juvenile legal system on best practices and policies to safeguard the rights of immigrant youth in juvenile court. The series includes resources for youth defenders (General Guidance, Rights of Noncitizen Youth, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status), juvenile court judges (General Guidance), and juvenile probation officers (General Guidance and Checklist). To view the complete series, in addition to other key resources around immigration and youth defense, please visit our Immigration page.
Caselaw Update:
In re K.-M.D.C, 343 Ore. App. 92 (Or. Ct. App. 2025)
The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed a juvenile court’s adjudication of reckless burning, holding that a finding of recklessness requires evidence around a young person’s subjective awareness of risk. This case involved a 13-year-old youth who lit a fire on a grassy hill which spread and ended up damaging several homes. At issue was whether there was sufficient evidence that the youth acted recklessly in damaging property. The Court of Appeals stated, “A recklessness inquiry must consider a person’s subjective awareness. . . . Here the juvenile court summarily concluded that playing with a lighter in a dry field is ‘certainly’ something that a 13-year-old child would recognize as risky and ‘is just simply reckless.’ But the question in this case was not whether playing with a lighter in a dry field was generally ‘risky.’ Instead, the juvenile court was required to determine whether the record supported a determination that the youth was specifically aware of the risk of property damage as alleged in the state’s petition.” This decision lays the groundwork for a reasonable child standard on recklessness, noting the importance of considering a young person’s subjective awareness of risk to sustain the requisite mens rea required in a recklessness finding.
From the Field:
Professor Kris Henning and Rebba Omer authored a law review article on decriminalizing normal adolescent behaviors, race, and disabilities. This article maps a way forward for all system actors in the juvenile legal system to mitigate and buffer against the harms of juvenile legal system involvement for youth with disabilities. Specifically, this article outlines youth defense litigation strategies when representing youth with disabilities, including 1) putting the judge, prosecutor, and probation officer on notice of a youth’s disability and requesting all appropriate accommodations either on probation or in a juvenile facility; 2) gathering mitigating evidence about a youth’s disability and trauma history to advocate for diversion or community-based alternatives; 3) advocating for a youth’s release from confinement based on a facility’s violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and/or relevant state laws; and 4) filing a motion to dismiss or motion to suppress when police or other officials violate the ADA. To access practice guides, sample motions, and other key resources around representing youth with disabilities in the juvenile legal system, please visit our Strategy Guide on Youth with Disabilities.
CfJJ delivered written testimony to the Massachusetts’ Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights and Inclusion on information-sharing practices between the juvenile and criminal legal systems and federal immigration authorities. Following a review of public records requests around these practices, CfJJ found a pattern of collaboration between police, prosecutors, probation officers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throughout the state. The testimony calls for state policies to restrain police collaboration with ICE, noting specific changes needed around the fingerprinting process, police surveillance and databases, internal police policies, oversight and accountability measures, facilities, and court policies around ICE presence in courthouses. This testimony offers persuasive language to push for heightened protections at a policy level to safeguard the rights of immigrant communities. To access more policy tools, please visit our Strategy Guide on Policy.
