Pricey True Moringa Household,
All through this month, we’re highlighting organizations centered on dismantling techniques constructed on racial injustice. We’ll be donating 20% of this week’s gross sales to the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Undertaking (YSRP), a Philadelphia-based advocacy group. To learn YSRP’s assertion on the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and numerous others, please click on right here. To examine YSRP’s values as a racial justice group, please click on right here.
the problem: holding kids out of grownup jails and prisons
In keeping with YSRP, “In Pennsylvania, kids as younger as 10 years outdated may be prosecuted as adults, that means that they face time in grownup jails and prisons. This has dangerous penalties for his or her well being, their emotional effectively being, and their futures. It usually means being despatched removed from their households and supporters. Being charged as an grownup makes a toddler 34% extra more likely to find yourself again within the system upon launch.”
In Pennsylvania, youth are routinely prosecuted as adults if they’re charged with sure crimes. In lots of different states, together with neighboring New Jersey, for a kid to be prosecuted as an grownup, a prosecutor should request that the kid be tried within the grownup system, and a choose should grant this request. This knowledge from WNYC’s evaluation of New Jersey courtroom data illustrates that stark racial bias exists at each ranges of choice making:
Supply: Administrative Workplace of the Courts, NJ from July 1, 2011 by Could 19, 2016.
In keeping with Laura Cohen, the director of the Felony and Youth Justice Clinic at Rutgers Regulation Faculty, “Controlling for nature of offense, controlling for household background, controlling for academic historical past — the entire issues that go right into a prosecutor’s choice, there are nonetheless disparities, important disparities, that can not be defined by something apart from race” (WNYC)
YSRP’s work
YSRP works with youth charged as adults in and round Philadelphia, in addition to a subset of this inhabitants – “Juvenile Lifers” – these sentenced to life in jail with out parole. In 2012, the US Supreme Court docket held that obligatory sentences of life with out the opportunity of parole are unconstitutional for people who had been sentenced as kids, in Miller v. Alabama. Within the 2016 Montgomery v. Louisiana choice, the courtroom held that this ruling needs to be utilized retroactively, affecting hundreds of circumstances throughout the nation. YSRP carries out their work with Juvenile Lifers by mitigation, reentry planning and assist for folks after they come residence, coaching for protection legal professionals and judges, and advancing coverage reform.
Mitigation
Throughout the courtroom course of in particular person circumstances, YSRP presents prosecutors and judges with mitigation reviews, or individualized narratives of an individual’s expertise.
For Juvenile Lifers eligible for resentencing and Parole Board hearings, YSRP supplies mitigation reviews, in addition to workshops within prisons on mitigation, reentry and self-advocacy.
Reentry Planning
As near a toddler’s arrest as potential, and previous to Juvenile Lifer resentencing hearings, YSRP creates individualized reentry plans that join youth or Juvenile Lifers with essential helps and providers in housing, employment, schooling and well being and psychological well being care.
Earlier than, throughout and after incarceration, YSRP connects youth, Juvenile Lifers and relations with individualized helps and providers.
Coaching For Authorized Protection & Advocacy
YSRP creates instruments and supplies trainings for protection attorneys to lift the extent of illustration for youth charged in grownup courts and Juvenile Lifers dealing with resentencing and Parole Board hearings.
YSRP trains and supervises graduate legislation and social work college students and different volunteers to work in groups that create affect inside and throughout techniques.
Advancing Coverage Reform
YSRP aspires to finish the apply of charging youth in grownup courts. Within the interim, YSRP’s coverage advocacy chips away on the dangerous impacts of grownup incarceration on younger folks and their households.
study extra
Additional studying suggestions from YSRP on youth sentencing and racial justice extra broadly:
Books:
- Simply Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Invisible No Extra: Police Violence Towards Black Ladies and Ladies of Shade by Andrea J. Ritchie
- How To Be An Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi
- White Fragility: Why It is So Arduous for White Individuals to Speak about Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Podcasts:
Movies:
- Simply Mercy
- When They See Us (Netflix)
- thirteenth (Netflix)
- The Hate You Give (additionally ebook)
Articles:
what different organizations are doing nice work to advertise racial justice?
how can I become involved with YSRP?
Past donating, you’ll be able to assist additional the work of YSRP by signing up for YSRP’s e-newsletter
