Justice For Children

"An important book at an important time." —Choice "Remarkable and sobering. . . . Educators, policymakers, and advocates all should find this book as motivating as it is disturbing: for every reason it gives to despair about the current system, it also reveals a pathway toward a far less populated system of juvenile justice, one that actually helps children rather than harms them." —Daniel Losen, co-author of The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Structuring Legal Reform Children and youth become involved with the juvenile justice system at a significant rate. While some children move just as quickly out of the system and go on to live productive lives as adults, other children become enmeshed in the system, developing deeper problems and at times introduced into the adult criminal justice system. Justice for Kids is a volume edited by leading academics and activists that focuses on ways to intervene at the earliest possible point to rehabilitate and redirect—to keep kids out of the system—rather than to punish and drive kids deeper. In the Families, Law, and Society series Contributors: Shay Bilchik, Brian R. Barber, Benjamin Cairns, David Domenici, Nancy E. Dowd, Jeffrey Fagan, James Forman, Jr., Joseph C. Gagnon, Theresa Glennon, Thalia N.C. González, Leslie Joan Harris, David R. Katner, KharyLazarre-White, Thomas A. Loughran, Thomas P. Mulvey, Kenneth B. Nunn, Vanessa Patino, Alex R. Piquero, Lawanda Ravoira, Stephen M. Reba, Sarah Valentine, Randee J. Waldman, and Barbara Bennett Woodhouse Nancy Dowd is Director of the Center for Children and Families at the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law and holds the David H. Levin Chair in Family Law. She is the author of several books, most recently The Man Question: Male Subordination and Privilege (NYU Press).

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the goal of a social justice approach for children is to ensure that children "are better served and protected by justice systems, including the security and social welfare sectors." Despite this worthy goal, the UN documents how children are rarely viewed as stakeholders in justice rules of law; child justice issues are often dealt with separate from larger justice and security issues; and when justice issues for children are addressed, it is often through a siloed, rather than a comprehensive approach. This volume actively challenges the current youth social justice paradigm through terminology and new approaches that place children and young people front and center in the social justice conversation. Through international consideration, children and young people worldwide are incorporated into the social justice conversation.

In Child-friendly Justice, world-leading experts on children’s rights analyse how the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has strengthened children’s status in civil, administrative and criminal justice systems.

This book examines and offers suggestions for how post-conflict practices should conceptualize and address harms committed by child soldiers for successful social reconstruction in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It defends the use of accountability and considers the agency of youth participants in violent conflict as responsible moral entities.

Anti-bias education begins with you! Become a skilled anti-bias teacher with this practical guidance to confronting and eliminating barriers.

"Crossover" Children in the Youth Justice and Child Protection Systems explores the outcomes faced by the group of children who experience involvement with both child protection and youth justice systems across several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Situated against a backdrop of international evidence and grounded in a two-year study with the Children’s Court in Victoria, Australia, this book presents a cohesive picture of the backgrounds, characteristics, and pathways traversed by crossover children. It presents statistical data from 300 crossover Children’s Court case files, alongside the expert evidence of 82 professionals, to generate a comprehensive picture of the lives of crossover children, and the individual and systemic challenges that they face. The book investigates the crucial question of why some children involved with child welfare systems experience particularly poor criminal justice outcomes, demonstrating how the convergence of cumulative childhood adversity, complex support needs, and systemic disadvantage produces acutely damaging outcomes for some crossover youth. It outlines the implications of the study, including how these findings might shape diversion and differential justice system responses to child protection-involved youth, and the innovative approaches adopted internationally to avert the care to custody pathway. This book is internationally relevant and will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology and law, social work, psychology, and sociology, as well as legal, welfare, and government agencies and policy developers, non-government peak bodies and services, professional probation services, case managers, health and mental health services, disability and drug treatment agencies, and others who work with both young offenders and the design and implementation of policy and legislation.

This inspiring collection of accounts from educators and students is “an essential resource for all those seeking to build an antiracist school system” (Ibram X. Kendi). Since 2016, the Black Lives Matter at School movement has carved a new path for racial justice in education. A growing coalition of educators, students, parents and others have established an annual week of action during the first week of February. This anthology shares vital lessons that have been learned through this important work. In this volume, Bettina Love makes a powerful case for abolitionist teaching, Brian Jones looks at the historical context of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in education, and prominent teacher union leaders discuss the importance of anti-racism in their unions. Black Lives Matter at School includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from participants across the country who have been building the movement on the ground.