This weekend, advocates from all over the country traveled to Washington D.C. to show their support for reauthorizing the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA) and passing the Youth PROMISE (Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education) Act.  The Community Justice Network for Youth held a two-day conference on Saturday and Sunday, and a press conference this morning to urge the Obama administration to change the disciplinary system for young people. 

Youth, parents, and advocates will visit their individual legislators after the press conference and show their support for these issues. The overall message of the weekend is that youth are being mistreated while incarcerated, when incarceration is not the most productive solution. In addition, money is being spent in the wrong places.

The speakers at the conference consisted of people with personal testimonials, policy advocates, and directors of youth support services.  Youth Radio spoke with two of them to get their personal perspective on the issue.  

The following was broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it cruel and unusual punishment to sentence juveniles to life without parole for cases not involving murder. Reginald Dwayne Betts’ story was included in an amicus brief in the case. At 16 years old he was found guilty for carjacking and spent more than nine years in adult prisons. But his sentence could have put him behind bars for life. Youth Radio sent us his story.

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

I remember meeting a guy even younger than I was, waiting for the bus to go to prison. I'll call him Rashid. His voice still carried the cracks and high notes of adolescence, and his smooth face had never seen a razor. We were headed to Southampton Correctional Center in Virginia.

No fewer than a dozen of us were teenagers, all with peers at home waiting on driver licenses, graduations and proms - while we waited for a prison cell. Rashid's time was legendary: three life sentences with no chance for parole. It meant he awoke each morning knowing he would one day flatline in a cell.

IN PRISON, GUYS told me that Rashid robbed and raped an old lady. His crime had no explanation, and everyone I ever talked to about it thought it was wild, heinous, and unfathomable. Rashid didn’t talk about his charges, and I couldn’t look at him without thinking how his sentence would last until his final breath. In the visiting room, I caught glimpses of his family and it almost seemed normal. Except that Rashid, the youngest among them, rarely smiled. And in prison, surrounded by the violence cells inspire in men, he was just a kid. There was no meanness about him, just the fragility of someone in the deep end, arms flailing, unable to swim.
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According to ABC news On Friday , 26 year old Raymond Taylor of New York was arrested. The previous day he had been released by mistake from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center. Taylor was serving three life sentences for killing his ex girlfriend and two teenaged daughters, which he was convicted for in 2005. Unfortunately he was placed in a cell with another prisoner who shared similar characteristics with him. Taylor’s cellmate was being released from prison and instead, Taylor took his cell’s mate ID card. When being released he was asked to recite the ID number and he did, twice. The mistake was discovered when Taylor’s cellmate began kicking on the cell door and yelling, asking to be released. Taylor was arrested when he was found at his friend’s home in Martinsburg, W.Va. Doesn’t this make you think about how secure prisons and jails are? If it’s this easy for a prisoner to escape, how safe is the public? If this continues to happen there will be a lot of convicts on the loose, waiting to commit other crimes. Because of this incident prisoners will probably start thinking of more ways to escape with the knowledge that Raymond Taylor had.

Can you imagine being locked up for 35 years for a crime you didn’t commit? That’s the case for 54-year-old James Brain. He was recently released after a DNA test showed he did not kidnap and rape a 9-year-old boy in 1974. Brain was 19-years-old when he was charged.

Brain represents one of 247 people exonerated by DNA testing. Innocence project is a national organization helping exonerated innocent people through DNA testing and according to them no else has spent more time in jail than Brain.

In a press conference Brain—wearing a T-shirt with “Not Guilty”—said "I'm not angry. I got God in my head. I knew one day he will reveal me."

I can't imagine how hard its going to be for him to transition to prison life to actual life.

Full story on CNN

New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling addiction or mental illness held alongside violent offenders says a new report out by a state panel. The report outlines how juveniles are held in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education.

The state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety -- recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

Monday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases concerning juvenile incarceration. The ruling could determine if it should be unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life without parole for non-homicide offenses on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. The United States is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

My story is part of an amicus brief asking justices to reverse the harsh sentences, and give young offenders an opportunity to become productive citizens. I was a juvenile offender who spent more than nine years in adult prison, and my offense could have put me in there for life. Since I've gotten out of prison, I delivered my college commencement address at the University of Maryland, I published my memoir A Question Of Freedom, and I entered grad school. I'm making the most of my freedom, but I know others who will never have the same shot at redemption.

You’ve heard the news and followed the trial. We hung on to every development. We posted comments on numerous articles, adding drops of water into the oceans of commentary. These perpetrators of crime were not like those we’ve come across in the streets or in news reports that lead the hour; these perps are famous. We’ve known them before they committed their crimes. They slipped into the back of our subconscious as they began serving their sentences. When these folks are released, having paid their debts to society, it’s as though they never left prison. We write them off as renegades. They may have served their time, but they are never released from the stigma of their crimes.