In 2019, more than $40 million will become available to fund community-based, culturally rooted, trauma-informed services for youth in California as alternatives to arrest and incarceration. Thousands of California youth are arrested every year for low-level offenses. Youth who are arrested or incarcerated for low-level offenses are less likely to graduate high school, more likely to suffer negative health-outcomes, and more likely to have later contact with the justice system.

By Jeff Wallace, Quad-City Times, February 2, 2020 Juvenile crime is at an all-time high in the Quad-Cities. Unfortunately, however, how juvenile crime is handled in the Quad-Cities isn’t the most proactive and solution-focused. Juvenile justice often focuses on juveniles after they have committed crimes rather than providing an intervention before the crime is ever committed. In our community, we know that poverty, trauma and lack of resources are high indicators of whether a youngster will...

I wanted to give the heads up to our ACESConnection friends about Dr. Monique Marrow who is one of the keynotes at Echo's March 21 & 22nd Frontiers of Resilience conference. Dr. Marrow will be speaking on “ Addressing Trauma in System-Involved Youth ," drawing on her extensive experience as a child psychologist in the juvenile justice system. She talks about the ' invisible suitcase ' that system-involved youth carry - a suitcase full of thoughts and perceptions about the world that have...

When I worked in juvenile probation there were times youth were labeled with the diagnosis BAD. They were just bad kids. There are even maximum security juvenile detention centers for kids with the BAD diagnosis. Kids who seem to have been born evil. As a criminal justice academician, I have read details of some of the most hideous crimes ever committed. I have a PhD in criminal justice. Currently I teach criminal justice to undergraduate students eager to begin their careers in...

By Susie Armitage, YR Media, October 16, 2019 When Bree was booked into a juvenile detention center as a teen, they were subject to a strip search. “The staff had to take off my clothes and started patting me down, touching me, and making me feel uncomfortable,” said Bree, who asked that their last name not be used for privacy reasons. As a youth advocate with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, Bree recounted their experience of incarceration in a report. “I felt violated, like I...

By Elizabeth S. Barnert, JAMA Pediatrics, February 10, 2020 Research shows that incarcerated youth are at risk of poor health and social outcomes.1 Interventions that focus on keeping youth out of the juvenile justice system are more likely to affect long-term outcomes.1 To create systems that prevent youth incarceration and improve youths’ trajectories, we must use evidence to inform public policy. By applying the scientific method through community-engaged scholarship,2 pediatric...

Women who support an incarcerated loved one finally has a place to share their stories on the Real Resilience P.W.L. Podcast.

From Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, February 2020 Today in Texas schools, students at every grade level face disciplinary methods that can land them behind bars. School administrations have implemented punitive “zero tolerance” policies and have increased on-campus policing in response to various incidents over past decades; this has led to negative, unintended consequences and has pushed many students — particularly those most vulnerable — out of the classroom, where they can be subject...

By Vivek Sankaran, The Chronicle of Social Change, May 17, 2020 During a recent training , a judge showed us a glimpse of his future courtroom and what awaits us when juvenile courts reopen. A plexiglass shield will separate the judge from the litigants. Attorneys will spread out across the courtroom. Parents and children will be seated apart from their own attorneys. Everyone will wear masks. What I saw frightened me. This can’t be our new normal in child welfare. Even before the pandemic...

By Jeremy Louenback, The Chronicle of Social Change, May 14, 2020 With coronavirus pummeling Californians’ health and economy like a modern day plague, few expected a line item buried in an otherwise deficit-driven budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday: After decades of the state running what was once the country’s most vast and notorious youth prison system, the end could be near for the Division of Juvenile Justice. The governor’s proposal would close the last three youth...

By Brian Richart, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, July 27, 2020 Probation in California has the responsibility of treating and supervising our community’s most high-needs and high-risk youth. We take our role in promoting healthy, prepared and positive adolescents seriously and provide each youth the supervision and support services they need to help guide them into adulthood. The use of individualized, evidence-based practices to advance the long-term well-being of youth is...

Join us on December 8th for this discussion on Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform! Work in corrections or youth justice? Engaged in the social justice movement? Are you a designer or architect? This is one talk you can't afford to miss! Christine Cowart, of Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership will join Janet Roche, faculty member and Alumni Council member of Boston Architectural College (BAC), in alive-broadcast event, to discuss the implications of trauma-informed principles...

Did you miss our talk on Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform? Based in the irrefutable facts of the biological effects of trauma, this talk is now available for you to stream!

New Jersey plans to spend a staggering $445,504 per incarcerated youth in 2022 to house them in facilities that are almost 80% empty. The time is now for New Jersey to close its youth prisons and invest in community-based alternatives. The current system, with its focus wholly on punishment rather than rehabilitation, the current system leaves whole communities — as well as the families of both victims and offenders — with unresolved trauma that continues to reverberate long after the...

Please join us for a new series entitled: Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice. This monthly series will feature conversations facilitated by Porter Jennings-McGarity, PACEs Connection Midwest and Tennessee community facilitator and criminal justice consultant, with special guests to discuss the need for trauma-informed criminal justice system reform. Using a PACEs-science lens, this series will examine the relationship between trauma and the criminal justice system, what needs changing, and...

Free educational Webinar invite! Topic: Ending Mass Incarceration and Uniting families Join WashingtonCAN on 12/6 and 12/9 to learn about a tool that could help your loved one get resentenced and released early in Washington State! My name is Rashell and I’m the Lead Organizer with Washington Community Action Network (WashingtonCAN), a grassroots organization with 44,000 members that advocates for mass liberation and an end to mass incarceration, through lobbying, advocacy, and grassroots...

In collaboration with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Child Focus, Child Trends has developed the STRENGTH principles to serve youth in the child welfare and justice systems in positive, developmentally appropriate ways. The principles help systems that serve children and young adults apply Positive Youth Development approaches, focus on equity and inclusion, and involve communities and families. More information is available here: Integrating Positive Youth Development and Racial Equity,...

We are excited to launch several exciting new initiatives designed for PACEs Connection’s trauma-informed criminal justice communities this fall. You talked, and we listened! Using the excellent feedback we have received from those of you who have participated in our trauma-informed criminal justice CRC, GRC, and SRC events this year, beginning in September we will offer more opportunities for connection and dialogue for individuals and communities interested in this specific realm of...

Event Title: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline Using a Trauma Informed Lens Event Date: Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 Event Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST Event Facilitators: Porter Jennings-McGarity & Lara Kain Special Guest: Tia Martinez Join PACEs Connection’s trauma-informed education consultant (Lara Kain) and trauma-informed criminal justice consultant (Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity) and special guest Tia Martinez for our first ever interdisciplinary collaborative event...

The Foundation’s juvenile justice reform agenda is designed to improve the odds that at-risk youth can make successful transitions to adulthood. We are working to create a system that locks up fewer youth and relies more on proven, family-focused interventions that create opportunities for positive youth development. To learn more, visit https://www.aecf.org/work/juvenile-justice .

(l-r) Judge J. Corpening; Ben David, district attorney, New Hanover County; Chief Justice Paul Newby; Judge Andrew Heath, executive director, Administrative Office of the Courts of the Chief Justice's ACEs Informed Courts Task Force. David and Heath serve as Task Force co-chairs . “There is not any more important work going on in the State of North Carolina,” said Ben David, District Attorney for New Hanover County and co-chair of the Chief Justice’s ACEs-Informed Task Force . The Task force...

(l-r) Judge J. Corpening; Ben David, district attorney, New Hanover County; Chief Justice Paul Newby; Judge Andrew Heath, executive director, Administrative Office of the Courts of the Chief Justice's ACEs Informed Courts Task Force. David and Heath serve as Task Force co-chairs . “There is not any more important work going on in the State of North Carolina,” said Ben David, District Attorney for New Hanover County and co-chair of the Chief Justice’s ACEs-Informed Task Force . The Task force...

Strengthen your understanding and practice of gender-responsive, trauma-informed interventions when you train with Dr. Stephanie S. Covington at this national conference.

Ben David, co-chair of the North Carolina Chief Justice's Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts, shares plans to sustain the work done during the two-year term of the Task Force, to "care for our own" speaking of North Carolina's children, youth, families, communities, victims of crimes, members of law enforcement, the judiciary and court officers and staffers. He also shared Chief Justice Paul Newby's hopes of "getting ACEs-informed courts" into the culture, and said a national conference for...