Posts Tagged: juvenile

Opinion

Time to focus on rehabilitation for juvenile offenders

Young people at a meeting with a psychotherapist. (Photo: Photographee.eu, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Recent reports found that youth detention facilities are failing to adjust spending rates even after facility populations have drastically dropped. California youth are not committing violent crimes at the rate that was once predicted, leaving many detention hall beds empty.

News

Life without parole: Reforms target youthful offenders

Photo illustration: A young woman in custody clings to a chain-link fence. (Shutterstock)

New legislation to overhaul California’s youth criminal justice system includes a key provision that bars life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Currently, the United States is the only country in the world to impose life-without-parole sentences on minors. Throughout the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down decisions that have begun to reverse the trend.

News

Brown: More carrot, less stick

An inmate gestures through the bars of his prison cell. (Photo: Sakhorn, Shutterstock)

Gov. Jerry Brown has a lot riding on the November ballot. Voters will decide on his Proposition 57, which Brown says would let nonviolent inmates become eligible for parole sooner, create “good behavior” credits for state prisoners and let judges decide whether to try a juvenile as an adult. With California’s prisons crowded and facing a court-imposed population cap, and thousands of inmates housed outside the state, Brown says his measure makes sense.

Opinion

Labeling on children’s products would hurt business

Chilldren at play with assorted toys. (Photo: Iakov Filimonov, Shutterstock)

Californians are inundated with consumer labels. Some of these labels communicate valuable information, others do not. The sheer number of required labels almost guarantees that most of us will be overwhelmed by the fine print and the labels never read. This week, California policymakers are considering a bill (SB 763) that would add yet another label – this time to children’s products.

News

Realignment targets adults, but youth system also in flux

While public attention has focused in recent years on startling changes in California’s prison system, the transformation of the youth correctional system has been even more dramatic.

California, which just a few years ago had 11 state juvenile prisons, now has three. The number of youth offenders sent to state lockups has dropped by 90

Support for Capitol Weekly is Provided by: