For years, Demetrius Johnson, now 54, spent his days imagining what his life could have been if he had made different decisions at the age of 16. He describes it as if it actually happened to an alternate version of himself: A Demetrius Johnson who got a job at 18 and took care of his family. Who bought a two-bedroom house next door to his aunt, where he lived with his mother, his son and his son’s mother. Whose aunt helped turn the garage into an extra bedroom.

In the 1994 film, “The Shawshank Redemption,” actor Morgan Freeman portrays a prison inmate nicknamed “Red” who addresses a parole board after serving 40 years of a life sentence. He’s asked if he has been rehabilitated.

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One night many years ago at 3:00 AM, I got a call from an 800 number, and something in me knew instantly that it was a loved one of mine calling from jail. I just knew it. It was one of my family members who was 17 at the time. I was in school and had just learned about some of the challenges that 17-year-olds experience in the criminal legal system in Texas. 

Read the rest of this article from the National Juvenile Justice Network.

In a typical room where nonprofits do the work of grantmaking—deciding which programs and solutions to fund with their philanthropic dollars—the faces around that table likely don’t reflect the communities that will receive that charity.

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In a time of prison overpopulation, why are we sending kids to jail? In the state of Texas, children as young as 10 years old are held criminally responsible for their actions. At age 10, most children are still in elementary school, spending their days on the playground and reading Dav Pilkey. So why do we think they’re so dangerous they should be locked up?

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In the last photograph Maggie Luna has of all her children together, they are lined up alongside her by size, at a Houston area Chuck E. Cheese. Two daughters and a son, ages 4, 5 and 9. It’s 2015, and after two decades of struggling with addiction and related episodes of incarceration, a Texas judge has just terminated her parental rights.

Read the rest of this article from The Imprint.

Today, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) announced a rebrand, officially changing the organization’s name to the Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE). The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition was founded in 2000 and has long fought at the State Capitol and in counties throughout Texas to safely reduce the flow of people into prisons and jails, to help people during and after incarceration, and to shift investments from the multi-billion-dollar state corrections system to community

Today, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released a guide analyzing positive justice legislation that became law during Texas’ 2021 regular session. The majority of bills go into effect on Wednesday, September 1.

Read the rest of this press release here.

As the number of juvenile females rises, experts are calling for a closer look at juvenile facilities and their poor resource management in addressing the lack of services this population has. The number of girls in U.S. detention centers has risen by 49 percent, according to a report by the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice; but systems are ill-equipped to address their needs.

When kids get in trouble with the law, it is far more likely they’ll be incarcerated if they’re Black or brown, and that has created a wide racial-justice gap for America’s youth, including in Texas. A new report from The Sentencing Project shows a promising improvement in many states, but nonetheless found that Black youth are more likely to be in custody than white youth in every state but Hawaii.

Read the rest of this article from Texas News Service.