SACRAMENTO, Calif. - About 225,000 kids younger than age 18 are arrested in California each year, and many end up in a juvenile facility. Now, many of their families are joining a nationwide movement - banding together to demand humane treatment for children behind bars. That's part of a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies called "Mothers at the Gate: How a Powerful Family Movement is Transforming the Juvenile-Justice System
," which was partially funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Zachary Norris is co-founder and executive director of the group Justice for Families and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland.

"The report is demonstrative of the power of ordinary people to make change to systems that seem sometimes intractable," he said. "Families are transforming the juvenile-justice system from the inside and from the outside."

Norris said family groups lobbied Sacramento for years until they got five youth detention camps shut down, after reports surfaced of suspicious deaths, extensive use of long-term solitary confinement and beatings by staff.

Dolores Canales, co-founder of California Families To Abolish Solitary Confinement, supports Senate Bill 11-43, as well as regulations passed last week in Los Angeles County that ban punitive solitary confinement for youths, except in temporary situations where the child is a threat to themselves or others.

"The way that we treat them while incarcerated, it's not deterring crime," she said. "It's not giving (them) a chance at rehabilitation. It's dehumanizing. The whole system needs to be revamped."

The report also highlights families' efforts nationwide to reform sentencing guidelines, end the practice of sending youths to adult facilities, and ensure that youths are placed in a facility near family.


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Illinois could soon be the fourth state to pass a law to prevent unfair youth sentencing.

The legislation encourages criminal courts to recognize youth who are convicted for acts of self-defense or as victims of violence.

Often, young survivors of sexual assault, sex trafficking or domestic abuse are convicted in adult court and given long prison sentences.

Madeleine Behr - policy director at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation - said the bill would allow judges in these cases to review mitigating information, and give them more discretion to not sentence using mandatory minimums.

"It's just really important to keep in mind how trauma impacts kids as they're growing up, and throughout their young adulthood and really, the neurobiology of trauma with that," said Behr. "The ability for judges to say, 'I can move the child's case back to juvenile court for sentencing,' it gives the judges more options."

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Lilian Jiménez - D-Chicago - has passed in both House and Senate.

More than 32,000 people in U.S. prisons today have been there since childhood, according to a report by Human Rights for Kids - which ranks Illinois 11th among states for incarcerating minors in adult prisons.

Behr cited cases like those of Chrystul Kizer, Cyntoia Brown-Long, and Sara Kruzan as reasons for the changes outlined in the bill. Gov. JB Pritzker is expected to sign it into law - and Behr said it can't happen too soon.

"We often have a system that has mandatory minimums as kind-of arbitrary guidelines that really are focused on punishment and retribution, rather than healing and restoration," said Behr. "There are not a lot of cases specifically I've seen in Illinois that this law will impact, but I'm hoping that it's a preventative measure."

Some 24% of boys and 45% of girls in the juvenile justice system have experienced trauma through at least five Adverse Childhood Experiences, according to a report by the nonprofit Rights4Girls.




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The first people to make use of a new state law on sealing criminal records are set to go before a judge today.

Previously, only people whose conviction did not result in incarceration could petition for expungement.

Jay Jordan, CEO of the nonprofit Alliance for Safety and Justice, which pushed for the law, will ask a judge in Stockton to seal his decades-old robbery conviction, and added Senate Bill 731 will give people who have paid their dues a clean slate.

"If you have a conviction in the state of California, and it did result in a prison term, and you finished probation or parole and have been crime-free for two years, then you can petition the court for an expungement," Jordan outlined.

If your conviction did not lead to time behind bars, and you meet those same criteria, the State of California will now automatically expunge your record. Seven other people will also petition the court for expungement today. A felony conviction can be a big obstacle when people try to find a job, rent an apartment, adopt a child or even chaperone a school field trip.

A recent federal budget agreement included $95 million to help states expunge criminal records. Jordan emphasized it is in everyone's best interest to help formerly incarcerated people rebuild their lives.

"Upwards of 92% of people who have records have already served their time, are over the age of 35, and have been removed from the criminal justice system five to seven years," Jordan pointed out. "By all accounts, they are not recidivating. These are mothers, fathers. So expungement is public safety, it is economic development, and it's really about families."

Under the new law, sex offenders cannot apply for an expungement, and law enforcement, government, schools and agencies dealing with vulnerable populations can still see people's criminal records.

Kentucky incarcerated more than 32,000 people in 2022 in both local jails and state prisons, a 250% jump from the mid-1980s, according to a new website tracking mass incarceration in the Commonwealth.

Ashley Spalding, research director for the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said those numbers don't include the thousands of Kentuckians being held in federal prisons, or who are locked into the criminal-justice system because they owe fines and fees.

"Kentucky criminalizes far too many low level of offenses including cannabis possession, criminal littering, public intoxication," she said. "There are lots of ways that people end up serving long sentences."

Black Kentuckians make up less than 9% of the state's population but 21% of the prison population. Since 2011, Kentucky lawmakers have enacted 76 measure increasing incarceration and only 14 reducing it, according to a Kentucky Center for Economic Policy analysis.

Amid the proposal to build a $500 million federal prison in Letcher County, Spalding said there isn't a track record of economic benefits, only harmful impacts on communities in the three other counties with federal prisons in eastern Kentucky.

"When we look at the three counties other than Letcher County that in Kentucky already have these prisons, we have not seen reductions in poverty," she said. "We have not seen the kinds of economic improvements that are often touted."

According to UnlockKY, Kentucky incarcerates 40% more people per capita than the U.S. average.