#juvenile-justice

#juvenile-justice

Over a decade ago, filmmaker Mimi Chakarova began following a cohort of young people trying to turn their lives around by becoming firefighters and medics through Bay EMT, a free training program. The result of that relationship-building, , shares their stories and the way they intersect with sweeping social issues like crime, public health, poverty, and inequity in a documentary that has the intimacy of a home video.

"I remember coming out of the theater and feeling upset and needing to decompress and grab a drink," Chakarova said. "That's when Randall West, the same firefighter I met a year before walked into the same place I was. Randall said: 'You want to do a documentary of unrecognized heroes? You've got to talk to Wellington. You've got to do a documentary about the kids who are in his program'."

A 16-year-old boy pleaded guilty to being an accessory after a mass shooting that left two men dead and three others injured in Etobicoke.

Lloyd Francis, a 21-year-old with extensive criminal history, was able to evade severe punishment due to the state's Raise the Age Law, having spent only two years incarcerated despite multiple serious charges including attempted murder.

"This trial has been hard... I feel like us yelling out of our lungs, it meant something." - Diana Gutierrez, aunt of David Gutierrez, expressing the emotional toll and relief following the verdict.

Sen. William Smith emphasizes the urgent need to clean up an overgrown cemetery in Prince George's County, which contains unmarked graves of Black children sent to a 19th-century juvenile facility. He believes acknowledging these deaths is crucial to addressing systemic issues within Maryland's juvenile justice system.

The trauma from both incidents, Brou said, has stayed with him to this day.

Probation officers are not clinicians and this tool removes this type of decision making from the probation officer.

It's like a little jungle. Everybody wants to be tough. Everybody wants to fight. It's a lot to go through.

After one of her first visits to L.A. County's juvenile hall in Sylmar, Efty Sharony filed a report that said she witnessed conditions worse than anything she'd seen in "over 20 years of experience visiting every level of carceral facility in California."

Thanks to 'reforms' like the Raise the Age act, which keep teens under 18 from suffering anything more than wrist slaps, juvenile offenders roam free.

"The Probation Department's chaos creates dangerous ripple effects on our youth's safety. Time and again, in report after report, we've seen neglect, mismanagement, and abuse, all while officials insist that change is coming."

You're not alone. Exactly what you feel [right now], I felt it. No matter how ugly it may look right now, whatever your situation is, it will get better.

"The goal is to provide a clean slate when they later apply for jobs, loans or housing."