Racial Justice
From the abstract: “This Article frames the experience of traffic stops for noncitizens as a form of “slow deportation.” It describes how the use of traffic stops to police noncitizens extends the system of racialized social control to immigrant communities with the effect of surveilling both race and status. It surveys scholarship across disciplines, racial…
On February 28, 2025, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court’s denial of a racial justice expert violated a young person’s due process rights to present a defense. This case involved an altercation between two middle school students involving the use of a racial slur and other racially derogatory comments. Defense counsel…
This resource is part of the Youth Defender Advocacy Program (YDAP) curriculum, a specialized trial advocacy training program for youth defenders.
From the executive summary: “This report offers recommendations for researchers, policymakers, diversion programs, and community organizations focused on diverting Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people from criminal punishment systems. Our recommendations are based on an assessment of diversion programs through a Black feminist lens, which starts from the standpoint of the women and…
One-page infographic on the seven key developmental needs of adolescence.
From the introduction: “In August 2024, the Office for Access to Justice hosted its quarterly convening with national public defense organizations to discuss youth public defense. During the convening Rachel Rossi, Director of the Office of Access to Justice and Liz Ryan, Administrator of Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, heard from members of…
The Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute released a report detailing survey results of nearly one thousand Native youth on their needs and priorities across issues that matter most to them. This survey was built and disseminated by Native youth leaders who worked in partnership with CNAY staff to practice and…
The Sentencing Project released an updated snapshot of youth arrest and incarceration rates, revealing that youth arrest rates have declined 80% from 1996 and youth incarceration declined 75% between 2000 and 2022. Despite these shrinking rates, the juvenile legal system is still marked by significant racial and ethnic disparities. Black youth are 4.7 times more…
The answer, then, is not to simply reform the system of punishment, but to stop surveilling and punishing kids and instead invest in the things that set kids up for success, like education, family support, and access to healthcare. We need to start seeing children as children, not as criminals, and giving them the tools…
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.
This research article explores the history of girls prosecuted as adults in courts across the United States. It explores the effects of childhood trauma and victimization on brain and physical development and the connection to involvement in the criminal legal system as children. The article describes the results of a survey of young women who…
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…
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 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 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 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…
