Resource Library
By understanding the conditions facing incarcerated youth, the responsibility of the justice system, and strategies designed to improve outcomes, stakeholders can make informed decisions. After arming readers with the historical timeline necessary to understand Texas’ complicated history with its juvenile justice system, LSJA’s Reimagining Reform report issues a challenge to stakeholders during a crucial time…
A decade after national protests catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and four years after a national racial reckoning triggered by Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd, lawmakers are wavering on their commitment to making the criminal legal system more just and effective. Many are…
This brief describes how states currently treat two categories of young people: youth who commit status offenses—behaviors that are not categorized as crimes—and young children who do not have the developmental capacity to fully understand the crimes they are committing. Through a 50-state scan of policy and practice, we detail how states respond to these…
The Black existence, in the United States of America, has always been regarded as a conditional right. Conventionally, Blackness must always be nonviolent and non-disruptive to safely exist. Because of this, Blackness cannot be confined to restraints and disrupts these conventions with acts of joy and creative expression. Black creativity is both unconventional and sacred.…
A new study by The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that young people assigned to probation after their first offense are more likely to be rearrested in the future, particularly for technical violations, than their peers diverted away from probation. The study, based on data provided by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) and analyzed by…
This report describes the process of developing or cultivating purpose and explains why purpose is one of the key aspects of healthy development in adolescence. Cultivating purpose is widely beneficial for adolescents, and it is particularly important for adolescents from traditionally underserved groups. Purpose is essentially a renewable resource that has the potential to benefit…
The focus of this paper is on the experience of Black adolescents who are growing up amidst evolving national beliefs about racism, ongoing political debate surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, and a growing national awareness about the experience of being Black in America.
Studies consistently confirm that incarcerating young people causes great harm, including increased victimization, recidivism, school drop-out, and long-term physical and mental health issues. Fortunately, research also identifies what young people need for positive, healthy development. Alternatives to incarceration, such as release schedules, should be crafted to ensure each young person has time for and access…
Challenging the Status Quo: Mobilizing Youth Defense Teams to Uphold Youth Rights & Uproot Injustice
This Racial Justice Webinar was hosted by the Gault Center and Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative on May 29, 2024. The webinar focused on a collective call to action for the youth defense community to transform the juvenile legal system by centering youth and their constitutional rights to freedom, liberty, and equality. This…
In this session of our 2023 Racial Justice Training Series, Prof. Kristin Henning, Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, and Mary Ann Scali, Executive Director of The Gault Center, will be joined by Dr. Linda Caldwell, Emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Dept. of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at The…
In this webinar from May 17, 2023, the Gault Center kicked off the 70th year of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Nearly 70 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, the Court acknowledged that separating children…
A webinar from April 10, 2023 with Dr. Martin Irwin, MD, Clinical Professor at the NYU School of Medicine, Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Multiple studies have concluded that children in the juvenile legal system or foster care, many of whom are victims of abuse and trauma, are prescribed psychiatric medication at a rate…
Webinar provided by the Gault Center on April 25, 2023. This training provided an historical overview on the racialized use of medicine, provider bias, and cultural mistrust, followed by a discussion on practical tools youth defenders can utilize to litigate against medication conditions and/or misdiagnoses of youth in the juvenile legal system. This training built…
School-based arrests have long made up a substantial number of cases in the juvenile legal system. This is particularly true for Black, Native/Indigenous, and Latino students; immigrant students, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and other historically marginalized students. Despite significant decreases in the rate of serious crimes and violence on school campuses over the past…
In this final session of our 2022-2023 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning, Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative at Georgetown Law, and Mary Ann Scali, Executive Director of the Gault Center, were joined by Clarence Ford, Social Justice and Wellbeing Advisor at the W. Haywood Burns Institute; Prof.…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali, Executive Director of the Gault Center, were joined by Jeannette Bocanegra, Executive Director of Justice for Families (J4F), and Prof. Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology and Raymond Pace &…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali were joined by Dr. Juan Del Toro, researcher in applied developmental psychology and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Dr. Tiffani J. Johnson, Assistant Professor in the…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali were joined by Eric Campbell, formerly incarcerated founder of Some People Understand Differently (SPUD), Inc.; Carmen Daugherty, Deputy Executive Director of Advancement Project; and Kristen Rome, Co-Executive Director of Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights. This…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Ebony Howard, Deputy Director of The Gault Center, were joined by Thomas J. Bahr, Deputy Public Defender at the Office of the San Diego Public Defender, who will discuss the California case In re Edgerrin J.; Dr. Noël…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, held on August 31, 2022, Prof. Kristin Henning and Ebony Howard, Deputy Director of The Gault Center, were joined by Harold Jordan, Nationwide Education Equity Coordinator at the ACLU of Pennsylvania; Reyna Rollolazo, Community Engagement and Anti-Racism Director at TeamChild; and Amir…
In this session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series and Book Club, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali, Executive Director of The Gault Center, were joined by Dr. Shameka Stanford, Juvenile Speech-Language Pathologist; and Duci Goncalves, Deputy Chief Counsel of the Youth Advocacy Division at Massachusetts’ Committee for Public Counsel Services. This session…
For the July session of our 2022 Racial Justice Training Series, Prof. Kristin Henning and Mary Ann Scali were joined by Dr. Kristia Wantchekon, Secondary Lecturer of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and incoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University, and Orlando Johnson, Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University…