Volume 45, Issue 4

Kia” was fifteen years old when she met her boyfriend. At sixteen years old, she found out she was pregnant, and her parents kicked her out as a result. Now, she is pregnant, homeless, and at just sixteen years old, highly vulnerable and not sure what to do next. Frederick Douglass once said, “It is…

Adulthood is a social construct. For that matter, so is childhood. But like all social constructs, they have real consequences. They determine who is legally responsible for their actions and who is not, what roles people are allowed to assume in society, how people view each other, and how they view themselves. But even in…

There is a significant and growing body of research documenting the poor quality of undergraduate and graduate training of professionals in the criminal justice, child protection, medical, and mental health fields on child abuse. Unless this training is received on the job, many of these professionals may go their entire careers lacking the necessary skills…

Like many states, Minnesota’s child protection system faces serious challenges in its mission to protect children and support families. The balance between child safety and family preservation is elusive. Minnesota has swung the pendulum significantly to the side that prioritizes child removal by using investigative versus collaborative approaches to intervention and under-utilizing family foster care…

Should children who commit crimes be processed as criminals? One might argue that Minnesota has formally answered this as no. The juvenile justice system operates with procedural rules that are distinct from adult criminal law. A criminal complaint does not begin a juvenile case; instead the case initiates with a petition. The title and procedures…

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” —Martin Luther King A seven-year-old girl has detailed sexual abuse during a forensic interview conducted at a Children’s Advocacy Center. “I’ve asked you a lot of questions,” the forensic interviewer says in wrapping up the interview, “Do you have any questions of me?” The girl…

The significance of being provided legal representation is well understood in the child welfare system. Unfortunately, a youth’s involvement in his or her legal representation varies greatly depending on the jurisdiction and case. In addition, the exact scope of an attorney’s representation for a youth in a child welfare proceeding also varies across the nation.…

The devastating consequences of parental incarceration are well established and widely recognized on international, national, and local levels. The increasing awareness of how mass parental incarceration harms children, their families, and society as a whole has led to recommendations for and the adoption of sentencing reforms. One holistic approach is to provide courts with both…