When we use shackles in juvenile court, we are not seeing youth with a potential for reform. That is not juvenile justice. In fact, that is no justice at all.
Connecticut Juvenile Training School
Posted inEducation
State revamps its approach to jail time for juvenile offenders
Last year 227 boys who committed crimes were incarcerated in the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, the state’s maximum-security facility in Middletown for juvenile offenders. They lived there for months before it was determined when they would be released. This uncertainty came to an end in October.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Op-Ed: Incarcerating disturbed youth is a flawed response
The particular facts of transgendered teenager Jane Doe’s case are unique, but the scenario of incarcerating severely abused children for entirely predictable behavior is all too familiar.
Posted inNews
Op-Ed: Incarcerating disturbed youth is a flawed response
The particular facts of transgendered teenager Jane Doe’s case are unique, but the scenario of incarcerating severely abused children for entirely predictable behavior is all too familiar.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Op-Ed: For Josh’s sake and Jane’s, can DCF listen to others?
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families should stop and listen to experts within and beyond our borders who are offering the help that Connecticut’s children need.
Posted inEducation
Op-Ed: For Josh’s sake and Jane’s, can DCF listen to others?
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families should stop and listen to experts within and beyond our borders who are offering the help that Connecticut’s children need.
Posted inEducation
Transgender CT teen writes court of her living conditions in prison
Since being sent to live in an adult jail eight days ago, 16-year-old Jane has spent 22 to 23 hours a day in her prison cell.
Posted inEducation
Advocates seek investigation into DCF treatment of court-involved youth
Child advocates are calling on Connecticut lawmakers to set up a special panel to investigate the treatment of children committed to the care of the Department of Children and Families for breaking the law.
Posted inEducation
Questions (and answers) about CT’s new girls’ incarceration unit
“There are girls that really very easily can fill these 10 beds,” said Joette Katz, commissioner of the state Department of Children and Families.
Posted inEducation
New locked girls’ facility in CT spurs questions about DCF’s direction (Part 2)
A group of prominent state lawmakers are not convinced that relying on locked facilities, which is the direction DCF seems to be headed in, is what’s best for these young offenders,
Posted inEducation
Boys in jail in Connecticut at a 10-year high (Part 1)
As DCF appears to be increasingly dependent on locked facilities to deal with troubled juveniles, some lawmakers are expressing concern about the planned new girls’ facility, and advocates and some lawyers are questioning the direction the state is heading.
Posted inEducation
Will locking up troubled girls help? State aims to find out with new Middletown facility
The new girls detention facility in Middletown The state’s child welfare agency will open a new state-run facility in January to lock up girls who break the law –- a decision that has generated mixed reactions from those who work most closely with these children. The facility that the Department of Children and Families will […]
Posted inEducation
DCF wants to open new facility in Middletown to incarcerate girls
The state’s child welfare agency is gearing up to open a new state-run facility in Middletown to incarcerate girls who break the law, a move that child advocates say is troubling. “I wish we didn’t need this,” Joette Katz, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, told private providers last month when announcing the […]
Posted inEducation, Health
Supreme Court: DCF gets to decide placement for delinquent children
The Connecticut Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that judges can no longer send children who break the law to treatment facilities out of state. The decision follows a move by state legislators last month to change the law to make clear who they want making these decisions — the commissioner of the Department of Children […]
Posted inEducation
Sending children to live out-of-state: Whose decision is it?
Unconvinced that Connecticut boys who have broken the law are being properly treated when they are sent to live at Glen Mills School in Pennsylvania for rehabilitation, officials at the state’s child welfare agency have decided to stop sending children there. “That’s it, we’re done,” Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz told a […]