In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court banned from courtroom evidence most results from lie-detector tests because those polygraph exams are scientifically flawed and unreliable, a ruling the American P...
Children in Rutherford County, have been arrested and jailed at rates unparalleled in the state. This story reports on an investigation of why that is happening — and other ways the justice s...
When Heather Martin was a senior in high school, she survived the 1999 Columbine High School shooting that killed 12 students and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado. Even as she tried to move on ...
The Los Angeles school district’s decade-old ban on suspensions for ‘willful defiance’ has benefited students — but also required a major investment in less punitive discipline methods. T...
In separate trials earlier this year, Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first parents in U.S. history to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a mass shooting committed by their child...
When Yusef Qualls-El was 17, a judge sentenced him to life behind bars. It was the mid-1990s, an era when the U.S. prison population exploded. Thousands of minors like Qualls-El received sentence...
Amid outbursts from gun control advocates in the spectator gallery, Tennessee’s GOP-dominated Senate passed a bill Tuesday to allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns in public...
Imagine waking up each morning with no hope for the day ahead, navigating a minefield of potential conflicts with your body on high alert. That was my reality as a marginalized youth — misunder...
After decades of neglect, the youth justice field is awakening to the importance of diversion in lieu of arrest and formal court processing for many or most youth accused of delinquent behavior. ...
The juvenile court system is supposed to ensure that young people accused of crimes have legal representation, even if their families can’t afford a lawyer. But in Cuyahoga County, some courtro...