Recent news

Xavier McElrath-Bey, Co-Executive Director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) and Co-Founder of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN), is being honored as a recipient of Juvenile Law Center’s 2023 Leadership Prize. In his work with CFSY, Xavier played an instrumental role in abolishing life without parole for youth in Nevada, Utah, Arkansas, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

On December 20th, 2022 Juvenile Law Center launched our Digital Youth Advocacy Toolkit. This resource offers downloadable templates and support to people looking to start or strengthen their own youth advocacy programs, drawing on Juvenile Law Center’s years of experience with its own Youth Advocacy Program. Leading up to launch day, I had the opportunity to sit down with the Youth Advocacy Program Senior Manager, and author of the Digital Youth Advocacy Toolkit, Cathy Moffa. Below is an excerpt of our conversation.

This past October, Delaware took a big first step forward in helping families across our state. Last year, Delaware was named one of the worst actors in the nation for tacking fines and fees onto criminal convictions or delinquency adjudications, ranking 47th out of 51 jurisdictions. No more. On Oct. 3, Gov. John Carney signed House Bill 244, making big changes for justice-impacted people around the state by addressing the harmful effects of these fees and fines.

I write with deep gratitude for your support and to ask you to again invest in us as we fight for rights, dignity, equity, and opportunity for youth. Please partner with us as we work to reduce the harm of the child welfare and justice systems, limit their reach, and ultimately abolish them so all young people can thrive.

An issue as serious as sexual violence requires a response rooted in evidence. A common response nationwide is the practice of placing youth on sex offender registries. However, this fails to advance public safety or prevent sexual violence and has devastating consequences for registered youth and their families.

As President Biden noted, marking the occasion this year, every October is National Youth Justice Action Month, where we “recommit to transforming our juvenile justice system, shifting its focus from punishment to support — from the past to the future.” However, this transformation cannot take place if we continue to seek justice through policies that cause harm despite sounding benign.

For years the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania failed to address structural barriers that lead to imbalanced and inadequate education for youth with involvement in the justice and child welfare systems but Act 1 is the first step to correcting that.  

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Miller v. Alabama. The Court held that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children 17 or younger convicted of homicide were unconstitutional. We celebrated this decision, as it meant that hundreds of people sentenced as children to die in prison had a chance at redemption, and a chance for freedom.

This week, members of Juvenile Law Center’s Youth Advocacy group, Advocates Transforming Youth Systems (ATYS), partnered with coalition Philly Homes 4 Youth in holding a town hall in the courtyard of Philadelphia’s City Hall to raise awareness about the unique needs of older youth facing housing insecurity-- particularly youth aging out of the foster care system.