Youth/Juvenile Justice/Children

House Bill 2712 and Senate Bill 6608, together referred to as the Gang Bill, are long pieces of legislation that would increase incarceration, increase racial profiling, create a state-wide database of people labeled gang members, and criminalize youth culture.

The Children’s Defense Fund released a report at the end of 2007 titled "America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline." The report looks at the connections between race, poverty, health and incarceration and demands that the United States stop channeling young people of color into its prisons.

House Bill 2688, if passed, would prohibit the transfer of some Washington prisoners to prisons outside of the state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report stating that treating juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system is bad for young people and bad for public safety.

Cassandra Villanueva left Partnership for Safety and Justice in late 2005 to join the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. As the coordinator of NCLR’s Latino Juvenile Justice Network, she works on reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. She sat down with Justice Matters’ editor Kathleen Pequeño to talk about disparities and Latino youth.