When they voted earlier this year to let police officers use a dangerous form of restraint on students in schools, Minnesota Democratic lawmakers said they did so because they had brokered a compromise. A task force made up of law enforcement agencies, disability advocates and others would create a model policy aimed at minimizing the use of prone restraint — the face-down hold Minneapolis police officers used to immobilize George Floyd as he suffocated. Now, however, some advocates say they fear that the task force’s law enforcement majority wants to shut down discussion of the issues at the ..read more

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. A Uvalde County grand jury has indicted former school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and another former district officer on charges of child endangerment, the first criminal charges brought against law enforcement for the botched response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, the San Antonio Express-News first reported. Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales face felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child, the newspaper reported. The charges come more than two years after the May 24, 2022 shooting, in which a lone gunman ..read more

Washington, D.C. – Fight Crime: Invest in Kids released their report “Costly, Punitive Juvenile Justice Approaches Undermine Healthy Adolescent Development,” during a Zoom briefing that brought together experts to discuss the urgent need for reform in the juvenile justice system. One key highlight: Rather than helping to fix juvenile crime in America, our current justice system often makes it worse. The report shows that our juvenile justice system often fails to consider the realities of adolescent development. Adolescents, unlike adults, are still maturing cognitively, meaning they lack ..read more

This story was originally published by The 19th. Ibtihal “Ibti” Cheko, 17, thought she would spend the legislative session in Tennessee advocating for laws about how guns should be stored and implementing background checks for those who want to buy them. Instead, Cheko and other organizers with Students Demand Action pivoted to trying their hardest to make sure Senate Bill 1325, which would permit faculty and staff to carry handguns at school, did not pass. They weren’t successful. The bill, which was co-sponsored by three Republican state senators, passed in both chambers in April. “There was ..read more

This article is republished from The Conversation.  Black youth show up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds or other violent injuries at an alarming and disproportionate rate in the United States. Some hospitals have violence interventions that can be effective in keeping these kids safer after they are treated, but in most cases victims are sent back into the world to continue their struggles. What if there were a way to prevent these kids from ending up in that hospital room in the first place? What if, years earlier, we could identify factors that predict which children are most li ..read more

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Illinois law bans schools from fining students. But police routinely issue tickets to children for minor misbehavior at school, burdening families with financial penalties. Two national civil rights groups accused Illinois’ third-largest school district on Tuesday of relying on police to handle school discipline, unlawfully targeting Black students with tickets, arrests and other discipline. In a 25-page complaint against Rockford Public Schools, filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the National Center for Yo ..read more

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter. It took four years and a jury trial for Amara Harris to beat the ticket that accused her of stealing another girl’s AirPods. Now she’s heading back to court in the hope of stopping schools from using police to discipline students. Illinois law bans schools from fining students. But police routinely issue tickets to children for minor misbehavior at school, burdening families with financial penalties. Amara Harris, the young Black woman from suburban Chicago who won a yearslong fight against a p ..read more

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters. STOUGHTON, Mass. — The last known person to see Sandra Birchmore alive was a police officer. He stopped by her apartment days before the elementary school teacher’s aide, 23 years old and newly pregnant, was found dead in February 2021. The medical examiner later ruled her death a suicide. The officer worked for the Stoughton Police Department, near Boston, where he first met Birchmore about a decade earlier through the agency’s Explo ..read more

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. Every night before going to bed, Antonio would tuck in his three younger siblings. After school, he’d tinker with toy cars, or help his dad, a mechanic, fix things around the house. “He’s quiet, but he’s caring in his own way,” said his mother, Yanelie Marquez. The Hechinger Report is using her son’s middle name to protect his privacy. But four years ago, the then-12-year-old Antonio suddenly lost interest in everything and everyone. It started with school: He complained he couldn’t focu ..read more

In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court banned from courtroom evidence most results from lie-detector tests because those polygraph exams are scientifically flawed and unreliable, a ruling the American Psychological Association concurred with. Courtesy of University of Nevada, Reno Laura Pazos Not a total ban, though, the ruling allowed polygraph results to remain in use during pre-trial evidentiary hearings to determine bail; and in adult court cases where both the plaintiff and defendant agree that those results can be submitted as evidence. However, in juvenile courts, where judges still hav ..read more