I know we're all tied up with national stuff right now, but is anyone paying attention to what's happening with that juvenile jail NSI in Wyoming, where kids are fleeing and terrified and the state decided that "the market would decide" if their "therapeutic" techniques are good?
This is a facility that was nearly shut down in Michigan for causing the death of a young man. A chain of kid jails that is currently being investigated. And the state of Wyoming thinks the market will decide if this is a problem?
I'm sorry... kids are not widgets. They're not for sale and their treatment and care should not be decided by whether or not people *purchase the services* of a child prison.
It's easy to lose sight of the issues destroying individual lives locally when we're in crisis. But we can't. People-- in this case kids-- are depending on it.
I heard about this on @WYPublicRadio this morning, and if they could send a link to their very thorough story that would be great. In the mean time...
Here is local coverage of the runaways. Because everything is awful this is treated as a nuisance rather than a crisis in how we are treating traumatized children. So here is some really bad local coverage for starts. thesheridanpress.com/news/local/nei…
The public radio story discussed the national investigation beginning in Michigan, and I'm wondering if that's the same investigation as the Lakeside Academy? Whether these institutions and share a parent organization?
That was what @WYPublicRadio reported and I'd also be v happy for a link
So to summarize, a chain of juvenile jails across the country is harming kids, and the kids in the WY facility had been found running away, and the adults who are supposedly in charge think this is a nuisance rather than a serious sign that we are putting children's lives at risk
I think the part that hit me the hardest was that there was this kind of moving story about a rancher finding a scared kid on his land and bringing him home for a hot breakfast, and...the takeaway wasn't that this kid had run from something bad...(cont)
The takeaway seemed to be that the rancher, like many people in Wyoming, carries a gun, and if the kid had not been compliant the rancher would have shot him, and that would have been sad.
So to b clear: concern is *not* a nationally-investigated abusive nightmare factory (cont)
It's that locals will be sad if they feel compelled to shoot the runaway children.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Oh brother. OK, so first someone with "Attorney for the State" in their bio asked me for...an example of there being a chasm between what the law allows and what justice would be. Which is a bit surprising to me, so I kinda ignored it. But you guys want it, here we go.
The person I'm quoting here informed me that the law is clearly written on paper, and any American can understand it, which...well...I wish that was the case, because then lawyers and courts wouldn't be as necessary (no more statutory interpretation!). BUT...
But it's true that there are laws written on paper. The problem is that (1) they are unequally applied and (2) they are more impossible to comply with for some people for reasons that are not their fault.
It's not just that college graduates bring vital services to a state like medical care and high-end tech work and innovation and development. It's also that it's hard to get valuable businesses to move to a state with horrible schools bc they will struggle to retain talent.
That's when you get into a situation where you can't open a new lucrative state business because the key engineering talent that you need doesn't want to live in a state with carceral policies and garbage schools. They have kids.
Hey hey hey everyone, it's that time again! Your weekly @PFJ_USA video on something gross about your criminal legal system.
This week: the "Brady" rule, or, why oh why do prosecutors have such a hard time handing over evidence of innocence?
So basically, when a person is accused of a crime, the rules of our court system say that prosecutors have to turn over "discovery," which is the evidence they have against the person.
Makes sense, right? If they think someone is guilty, they should be able to show why.
And from a system perspective, handing over that evidence right away makes sense: if the evidence is overwhelming, the person might decide to plead guilty when faced with, like, a very clear videotape of them doing some crimes.
I promised you that every week I would tell you something you don't know (but should) about criminal courts. Today, let's talk about #debt.
What follows below are things I have learned from @FinesandFeesJC, @PSARATHYJONES, @JuvLaw1975 as well as deep research through @pfj_usa on this issue.
Basically, the takeaway is that NOT being in debt is good for safety: when people are stable financially they’re less likely to be put in a position of engaging in harm. partnersforjustice.org/evidence/what-…
OK... here we go. Yesterday I did a poll asking if folks would want short video explainers about things. People did, so here you go. Juror restrictions are really racist. Let's talk about it.
I want to be really clear, there are 4 levels of problem here
1. Who even gets called to jury duty is influenced by lists of potential jurors being drawn from the DMV and voter rolls, restricting eligible people to people who engage with bureaucracy on this level
2. In order to be able to answer the call people have to be able to take time off from work, find child care, access transportation... in other words they have to have enough money to be able to go to jury duty...
OK so…what if I told you that there is a thing that @PFJ_USA and public defenders can do together that gets cases *dismissed*...over 70% of the time. And 87% of the time, this same thing takes jail and prison sentences off the table.
Read on.
So, as you probably know if you follow me, the criminal legal system is full of…well, there’s a lot of noise in the machine. A huge number of cases are over-charged, meaning prosecutors laid the heaviest charges they could on a person instead of more accurate allegations.
In real life, this looks like a schoolgirl who punched a bully (once) getting charged with felony assault with intent to cause great bodily injury or assault with a deadly weapon (because she had a ring on at the time).