The recent launch of the HRFK 2020 National State Ratings Report on Human Rights Protections for Children in the U.S. Justice System.Our report tracks 12 categories of law that we deem essential to creating a legal framework that upholds the human rights of justice-system involved children. These categories range from banning solitary confinement and the use of mandatory minimum sentences on children to establishing a minimum age for juvenile court jurisdiction and voting rights restoration for formerly incarcerated youth.The purpose of the report is to help educate the public and public policymakers on what reforms need to take place in order to better align our laws with human rights principles, including those found in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The report also aims to inspire policy change by uplifting the states that are doing well, while calling out the states that are doing poorly.While the report is limited in scope to legislative reforms, we believe this is an important step in aggressively moving the country in the direction of wide-scale systemic change on these issues. It also comes on the heels of the publication of our Legislative Blueprint earlier this year, which encouraged the adoption of model reform provisions.Later this week, people will be able to download their individual state reports on our website, which will include the statutory language we relied on in our analysis for giving each state its cumulative score.Here is attached a brief one-pager which shows the tier that each state falls into, along with a description of the categories we rated states on. Please feel free to share with your networks and on social media using #YJAM to support youth justice awareness month.Lastly, there will be a live streamed zoom talk about our report this Friday, Oct 30th at 02:00 PM Eastern Time. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, you can Register here:https://zoom.us/meeting/
register/tJIoc-GoqjsvHNEg27C- z95GTbdqaF8AhjHX After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.