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The article examines the importance of court evaluation of the academic progress of a youth to determine the appropriateness of Individualized Education Programs (IEP) in an adult correctional facility. Topics discussed include the difficulty facing youth with disabilities in correctional facilities in receiving various services under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), history of juvenile justice and juvenile rights, and varied court opinion on evaluating IEP.

Youth involved with the juvenile justice system present with a higher rate of disability, including mental illness and learning disabilities, than do nonsystem-involved youth. These young people are often eligible for special education services as provided by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA"). Eligible youth incarcerated in juvenile detention and correctional facilities, however, often fail to receive these services. Education advocates typically bring suits against school districts and correctional institutions alike under the IDEA's mandate to provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Unfortunately, this approach is failing because the IDEA is not able to tackle other conditions within facilities that stand as barriers to educational access. The IDEA, however, is not the sole remedy available. The Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), which reaches beyond the educational context and applies to more governmental entities than the IDEA, offers a more robust litigation avenue for enforcing the education rights of incarcerated youth with disabilities. Bringing suit under the ADA, therefore, either alone or in conjunction with the IDEA, could result in more consistent enforcement of incarcerated youths' right to an education than bringing suit solely under the IDEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inquiries into a range of issues involving juveniles in the psychiatric hospitalization and criminal trial process reveal that, regularly, juveniles are subject to shame and humiliation in all aspects of the legal system that relate to arrest, trial, conviction, and institutionalization, shame and humiliation that are often exacerbated in cases involving racial minorities and those who are economically impoverished. We contextualize them into the juvenile justice system, and look specifically at how this is reflected in the case law. We then consider these findings through the filters of therapeutic jurisprudence and international human rights laws, concluding that these approaches best remediate the current state of affairs and infuse this system with badly‐needed dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a public defender, I often represent young people from twelve to seventeen years old in juvenile court. My juvenile clients face a wide range of accusations and they come from various family circumstances. Nearly all of my juvenile clients, however, are young people of color from under-resourced communities. Many find themselves arrested for typical adolescent behavior and others are accused crimes that they did not commit. When counseling juvenile clients, I carefully explain the nuances of the juvenile justice system that is now aggressively examining their lives. I strive to provide information that will help them make informed decisions in court proceedings that treat them like adults despite their still-developing adolescent brains. To some of my clients, for example, I must explain that unless your behavior is nearly perfect in the coming months, you may not be home with your family for a long time. To many clients, I must explain the role of the judge in juvenile court. Despite what you have seen on television, of explain, a judge--not a jury--will decide whether or not you are "guilty" of the "crime" that you are accused of. When making this decision, the judge will be aware of all sorts of information that the judge is not permitted to consider. The judge, for example, knows if you have been in trouble before. The judge knows your family's financial struggles, your challenges at school, and the difficulties you may have had following court orders. The judge might even know if you have not been following the rules at home. To some clients, I also explain that the judge will know about your statement to the police even after the judge tosses it from the case because you did not "confess" voluntarily. I explain that the law requires us to act as if the juvenile court judge is simply able to ignore all this information when making the decision about whether you did what the police say you did. At this point, juveniles often become aware that the juvenile court process has some dangerously unfair features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay presents the narrative of three African American brothers as they journey through the special education system. Their narrative illustrates the human cost of the failure to implement reforms meant to combat the systemic inequality that supports the school-to-prison pipeline. The brothers' narrative is shaped by several factors all too common to the school-to-prison pipeline: unequal treatment of children of color in schools; lack of access to quality health care; structural flaws in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ("IDEA "); and poverty. The IDEA is a statute designed to protect the rights of children with disabilities by mandating that states provide students with disabilities with a "free appropriate education " tailored to their unique needs. This Essay recommends interim solutions to address the negative outcomes for students with disabilities caught in the school-to-prison pipeline. Namely, students with disabilities should have access to free interdisciplinary legal services to enforce their rights under the IDEA and to assist with providing access to health care. The Essay suggests that, although there is widespread recognition of the need to implement reforms to address the school-to-prison pipeline, achieving reform is complicated by the deep structural flaws in the systems that contribute to the pipeline. As a result, reform is a slow-moving process. A ll the while, a whole class of students continues to enter the pipeline and face potentially grave consequences. These students need solutions now. While access to justice and health care advocacy will not eliminate the pipeline, it can provide much needed relief for individual students and disrupt the pipeline, one case at a time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), particularly through its exhaustion provision, imposes significant obstacles on whether an incarcerated person may raise claims about conditions of confinement in court. The PLRA, as interpreted, demands proper compliance with a correctional facility's grievance procedures, no matter how complex those procedures are. Though many struggle to comply, certain groups of the incarcerated population have been unduly prevented from litigating abuses. One such group is incarcerated adolescents, who - despite recent recognition that they should be differentiated from adults in the criminal justice system - remain subject to the same difficult exhaustion standard as incarcerated adults. This Note argues that the Supreme Court's most recent interpretation of the PLRA's exhaustion provision demands a different analysis of attempts by nonordinary incarcerated groups to exhaust. In Ross v. Blake, issued in 2016, the Court clarified that grievance procedures must be "capable of use" or "accessible" for a person to be required to exhaust them; otherwise, there is no available remedy and the claim should not be dismissed for failure to exhaust. This Note uses adolescents incarcerated in adult facilities as an example of a nonordinary group to explain why they lack an available remedy under Ross. In light of recent research establishing that adolescents have significant cognitive and developmental differences from adults and are at a higher risk of victimization, courts should account for their increased difficulty in understanding and complying with adult facilities' grievances procedures. Without an "accessible" means of obtaining relief, adolescents incarcerated in adult facilities should not be barred from the courts for their failure to exhaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the idea of legal finality for victims and prisoners, particularly juveniles, and the kind of finality that helps in the restoration of an offender to society and does not dishonor victims. Topics discussed include finality argument as part of debate over juvenile life sentences after U.S. Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, mass incarceration as a modern phenomenon, and retribution represented by sentences of life without parole for juveniles.

Black youth make up just 16% of public school students in the United States, though they constitute 31% of all juvenile arrests, with Black males outnumbering females. Very little is known from research about the long-term consequences of such contact on their odds of college enrollment. Thus, the purpose of this study was to measure the relationship between Black males' early contact with the criminal justice system through arrest and their probability of enrolling in a four-year college using a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,100 Black males who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (1997). Survey data were analyzed using descriptive, chi-square, and hierarchical binomial logistic regression techniques. Results expose pervasive limits on Black males' college enrollment, reveal the statistically significant influence of early arrest on college entry, and have far-reaching implications for research, policy, and outreach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed whether a Bible college program had an impact on prison misconduct by examining 230 offenders in the Texas prison system. Findings suggest participation in the Bible college significantly improved offender behavior, reducing misconduct by one discipline conviction per participant. The results also showed that participation significantly decreased the risk of incurring a discipline conviction, lowering it by 65 percent for minor misconduct, 80 percent for major misconduct, and 68 percent for any misconduct. The findings are consistent with existing research, which has generally found that participation in prison-based programming, including educational and faith-based programs, produces better misconduct outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of physical restraint with children in penal custody has been the source of widespread concern following the restraint-related deaths of two teenage boys in 2004. Eleven years later, deep disquiet remains. Drawing upon empirical research conducted in an English young offender institution, this article assesses the key problems associated with the use of restraint and the extent to which forthcoming reforms will address the identified concerns. It argues that, thus far, the treatment of child prisoners has not given appropriate recognition to the status of the child prisoner as a child and independent rights holder with the effect that physical restraint has been used inappropriately, routinely and, in the worst cases, unlawfully, exposing children to harm. Notwithstanding the intended reforms, further legislative, policy and systemic change is required to give primacy to the status of child prisoners as children and fulfil the State's obligations under international human rights law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the reasons why the U.S. criminal justice system continues to use the practice of isolating inmates, particularly those under the age of 18, as of 2015, and it mentions various legal challenges to solitary confinement (SC) decisions based on the Eighth Amendment to the nation's Constitution. According to the article, no American state of federal court has deemed solitary confinement to be per se unconstitutional. The psychological impacts of SC on prisoners are examined.

The article examines the constitutionality of lengthy term-of-years sentences or life-without-parole sentences for juvenile non-homicide offender with relevance to the judicial decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Graham v. Florida. It discusses various Supreme Court cases related to the same including Eddings v. Oklahoma, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, and Thompson v. Oklahoma regarding juvenile sentencing.

There is overwhelming empirical evidence that the rights and well-being of children incarcerated in penal institutions in England and Wales are inadequately protected, despite some significant rights-based litigation taken by detained children and their advocates. The removal of criminal legal aid from all prisoners, including children, and the potential future repeal of the Human Rights Act will further increase their vulnerability to rights-abuses. This article argues that one solution to this current legal problem is to abolish penal institutions for children sentenced to custody and to place them instead in care-based homes. A rights-based case is made for this solution by conceptualizing the rights of incarcerated children to argue that the State has an assumed responsibility to parent children deprived of their liberty; a responsibility that can be met only in small, care-based homes. The article concludes by setting out the Coalition Government's recent proposals to introduce Secure Colleges in the juvenile secure estate, and briefly considers whether these new institutions will facilitate the State's fulfilment of its assumed responsibility to parent incarcerated children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the fate of juveniles condemned to life imprisonment without parole for being accessories to felony murder in the United States. Topics mentioned include the case of one such individual, Kuntrell Jackson, the ruling in Miller v. Alabama that life without parole for juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment, and the mitigating evidence that must be considered under Miller.