Juvenile Justice Involvement: ABA Wants Input on "Collateral Consequences"

Are you a juvenile defender or Legal Aid attorney working in the juvenile justice system?
The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section wants your help and input. It wants to collect state-by-state information on statutes, regulations, and practices that worsen the impact when kids get involved in the juvenile justice system.
In other words, it's looking for anything that might "affect a youth’s access to public education, employment, public housing, public benefits, voting rights, and other sources of opportunity and support."
The initiative has three goals:

1. Provide legal materials to stakeholders in the juvenile justice system as well as families and their representatives in legal aid systems across the United States to increase consideration of the ramifications of arrest and court involvement;
    
2. Improve attorneys’ awareness of these collateral consequences and integrate this knowledge into the legal advice they offer juveniles, their families, and their representatives in legal aid; and
    
3. Provide age-appropriate materials that make clear, in age-appropriate language, what the immediate and long term consequences of arrest and court involvement are for juveniles and their families.

You can read more on the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) site. If you're interested in serving as a content expert on your state's juvenile justice system, please contact, Hannah Geyer.

Related Post:

• Representing Juvenile Status Offenders - A Guide from the American Bar Association

(Photo by teapics.)