Juvenile Law Center

The Juvenile Law Center recently announced the winners of this year's Leadership Prize: Cyntoia Brown Long, Dorothy Roberts and Tomas Grisso.

Groups are urging the Biden administration to discourage states from charging fees and fines to incarcerated juveniles, saying they unfairly load debt on low-income youth and their families.

With most free residents across the United States keeping at least six feet apart, feverishly washing their hands and avoiding any social groups, 43,000 young people in juvenile lockups and prisons are living in coronavirus petri dishes that have become “brewing reservoirs” of infection, according to inmates and juvenile justice experts.

Tuesday’s election offers us many opportunities to make change — from candidates to resolutions. One of most importance to me personally and professionally is Pennsylvania’s ballot referendum on Marsy’s Law, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would “grant certain rights to crime victims, including being treated with fairness, respect and dignity.”

In a very local story that appropriately went viral, even prompting a comment from a sitting U.S. Senator, a Pennsylvania school district threatened to place children in foster care if their parents did not pay off their school lunch bills.

We owe teens and young adults in the child welfare system permanency and support so they are prepared for adulthood. The key way we plan with them for adulthood is by creating a transition plan.

In 2018, Louisiana was among the handful of states with no offer of foster care support beyond age 18 for youth who became adults in the system. Since then, the state has moved quickly through incremental steps toward extended foster care, and is now poised to begin a robust expansion to age 21 that will tie older youth to specially-trained case managers stationed around the state.

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, a public interest law firm focused on youth and family issues, is taking applications for its annual juvenile justice and foster care advocacy training program for youths with experience in either or both systems.