West Virginia schools' reliance on zero-tolerance policies are driving more kids into the juvenile justice system - with lifelong consequences, experts say.

New data from the Brookings Institution show Black and Hispanic female students are disproportionately referred to the juvenile justice system for minor offenses.

Elizabeth Shahan, executive director of the nonprofit West Virginia Prevention Solutions, said behavior like vaping in a classroom can land a child in a magistrate's court.

She said research supports using a peer or youth court model that emphasizes positive action, and added it's a huge investment for communities to offer alternatives.

"But when done well, you are judged by a court of your peers, much like a regular courtroom," said Shahan. "That court's job is to come up with a way for you to restore faith in and/or to remedy the situation."

According to the Brookings report, juvenile complaints lead to more school absences and lower test scores.

Black students are more than twice as likely to receive a referral to law enforcement or be arrested at school than white students.

Shahan said research has shown young brains aren't developed enough to fully understand the consequences of their actions.

So, the current punitive model only ensures they have no path forward to recognize their behavior as wrong, or be provided examples of good behavior.

"We now have a situation where we have a serious black mark on that youth's record," said Shahan. "We've basically doomed them to failure."

Shahan added that overuse of the juvenile justice system for minor or nonviolent offenses comes with a hefty price tag for the state.

"A lot of economic research has gone into if we spend a dollar on preventative services, preventative intervention before kids engage in risky behaviors," said Shahan, "then we save $24 in treatment costs, court costs, consequences costs."

She noted that criminal punishment also doesn't address mental health issues that often led to problematic behavior.

According to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the number of school-aged kids struggling with anxiety or depression nationwide rose by 1.5 million between 2016 and 2020.

Data show troubling disparities on the number of justice-involved individuals within the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Pew Research figures show Black people remain over-represented in jail populations and receive longer sentences.

The John Howard Association is a non-partisan prison watchdog group that monitors the treatment of justice-involved individuals and says change needs to happen at many levels.

Executive Director Jennifer Vollen-Katz said the population of Black people in Illinois is around 14%. For white people, that number is around 68%.

IDOC's 2024 fact sheet shows a sharp contrast.

"But when you look at the racial makeup of the population in the Illinois Department of Corrections," said Vollen-Katz, "we find somewhere between 52% and 54% of the individuals inside IDOC are black - and about 32% of the people inside our prisons are white."

Conversations with IDOC workers and administrators are part of JHA's research, and pair with inmates' perspectives and experiences.

The goal is to increase public awareness and IDOC's transparency. Illinois.gov lists 29 correctional buildings statewide.

Katz said she wants equal treatment in the justice system - regardless of background or race - and a deeper look at law enforcement's relationships with different communities.

She said prosecutors wielding enormous power in making legal decisions is a huge problem in the early stages of the criminal justice system, and said she feels discrimination should be identified at its source.

"The disproportionate representation in our prison system is reflective of the lack of equity throughout our criminal legal and law enforcement systems," said Vollen-Katz, "and so we can't look at any one system to solve the problem. We need to start at the very beginning and do things quite differently if we're going to address this problem."

Katz affirmed that differences in the outcomes of charges, trials, and plea deals in sentencing are additional areas for reform.

She said more information is needed to improve the back end of the justice system - mandatory supervised releases, parole, and early discharge.

A May 2023 study from the anti-mass criminalization group The Prison Policy Initiative shows 28,000 Illinois residents are in state prisons, 17,000 are in local jails, and 6,100 are in federal prisons.



get more stories like this via email

Alabama's reliance on fines and fees to fund state services can turn minor incidents such as a traffic violation into overwhelming debt for low-income residents.

To address the issue, Alabama Values, through its Justice in Focus initiative with the Beacon Center, is working to identify solutions. During a recent virtual panel, advocates and legal experts discussed how financial penalties contribute to poverty and proposed strategies to ease the burden.

Aylia McKee, chief public defender of Montgomery County, highlighted the root of the problem: how fines and fees are assessed.

"Some of the biggest troubles with the determination of funds is the failure to provide information about an individual's ability to pay," McKee pointed out.

A survey of nearly 1,000 Alabama residents found 83% had to forgo essentials such as medical care, food or transportation to pay their legal costs.

Judge Tiffany McCord of the 15th Judicial Circuit of Alabama, said the justice system is a balancing act, which aims to deter crime while maintaining public safety. However, she stressed courts offer alternatives to ease financial burden for those who seek help. McCord added stigma and embarrassment often prevent people from sharing financial struggles, making it harder to access support.

"We want people to know or understand that you can ask for your fines and court costs to be remitted," McCord emphasized. "We want people to know and to understand that you know you can ask to do community service instead of paying fines and court costs."

Richard Williams, executive director of the Beacon Center, runs the Next Steps Program, designed to offer another alternative. He described how the initiative supports people navigating the justice system through leadership classes, therapy and real world skills.

"We have trained staff persons who are walking with them and they're walking through things around financial management," Williams explained. "They're walking around things of how do we regulate our relationships "

While the Next Steps program has seen success in Montgomery County, advocates argued similar efforts are needed statewide. Panelists also called for legislation to ensure fines and fees are assessed based on a person's ability to pay and urged efforts to rebuild trust between communities and the courts.


get more stories like this via email

More than a third of Idaho's jails have failed their inspections but consequences for failing grades are unlikely.

The nonprofit newsroom InvestigateWest has created a database of inspections for Idaho's 35 jails over the past three years, showing 14 failed in 2024.

Whitney Bryen, injustice and vulnerable populations reporter for InvestigateWest, noted the inspections are not required, as in many other states. She said the Idaho Sheriffs' Association conducts the inspections and all the jails have voluntarily agreed to them.

"There is no state agency that oversees Idaho's jails," Bryen pointed out. "There's no mandated inspection of any kind in terms of someone from the state going in and checking on jails' conditions and how detainees in those facilities are doing."

Bryen explained the jails get a report after the inspection but it is up to the jails to decide what they want to do with the information. She observed many of the failing jails said it was not possible to pass because they do not have money for things such as building upgrades or new hires. Bryen added lawmakers have reached out since the InvestigateWest database was published.

Jails fail the inspection if they do not pass any of the Idaho Sheriffs' Association's eight standards. Bryen emphasized one of the standards is to have at least two deputies on duty at all times and some jails failed because they only had one on duty at certain times of day.

"That was a very common standard that was failed," Bryen reported. "In fact, every one that failed either had too many detainees or not enough staff and some of them faced both of those issues."

Bryen added nine jails did not pass the association's recommended standards, although this did not cause them to fail the inspection. She stressed standards in jails do not just protect the people who are incarcerated.

"It's not just a rule being broken -- and again, it's not a rule because they don't have to follow it -- but these standards are designed to protect the people behind bars and the deputies who are keeping those folks safe."


get more stories like this via email