Kids in the System

This post first appeared on Beacon Broadside (7/20/11). David Chura, a writer and educator, worked with at-risk youth for many years and shares the voices of young people that he met as a teacher in a New York prison in his new book I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup. We highly recommend David’s excellent blog, Kids in the System, and are so grateful to him for letting CfJJ share his post.

A Different Kind of Commencement

Now that all the high school graduations are over and the backyard barbecues celebrated, I’m finally coming down from the contact high of all that youthful exuberance and optimism.

It’s easy to get swept up into those good feelings. But now as I move into summer’s quieter months, I can’t help thinking about the high school students I taught in a county penitentiary and what “commencement” meant for them.

Teen Prostitution–Criminal Behavior?

By: Madeline Levitt, CfJJ Intern

The number of children who become victims of sexual exploitation in the country is truly shocking. The Children’s Defense Fund estimates that about 100,000 American children between the ages of 11 and 14 enter into prostitution each year. Sadly, the average age of these girls has been declining, the number of girls involved is increasing, and the problem is spreading to more towns and cities annually.

Society’s response has traditionally been to prosecute both these girls and the men who take advantage of them. But in the last decade, new attention has been drawn to the issue and multiple states have begun to consider teen prostitution as a child welfare issue: Why are these girls living on the street rather than with a loving family in a safe home?  Furthermore, will criminal prosecution help or will it simply traumatize them further and hamper their reintegration into society? Just recently, Connecticut, Washington, Illinois, New York, California, and Texas have passed legislation to decriminalize teen prostitution.