Youth Justice Archives

Community Organizations Challenge Sheriff’s Actions on Youth Transportation and Detention Center Transition

Youth Justice | 11/4/2024

Cardell Orrin Executive Director

On Friday, November 1, a coalition of youth justice and community organizations has issued an open letter to Sheriff Floyd Bonner addressing two urgent crises: the abrupt cessation of youth transportation services to court hearings and a rushed timeline for transitioning the Youth Justice and Education Center (YJEC). The letter raises serious concerns about how these decisions compromise both youth rehabilitation and community safety.

Just days before Juvenile Court resumed operations following a five-month closure, the Sheriff’s Office announced it would no longer transport youth to court hearings, forcing an emergency shift to virtual proceedings. This decision comes amid ongoing disputes about the Sheriff’s unilateral announcement to transfer detention center operations to Juvenile Court by December 2024, despite mid-budget cycle constraints and the need for proper transition planning.

“These operational decisions have real consequences for young people and their families,” said Ala’a Alattiyat of the Youth Justice Action Coalition. “When we deny youth proper court access and rush critical transitions without adequate planning, we’re not just affecting their legal rights – we’re sending a message about how little we value their future opportunities.”

The coalition’s letter documents that the YJEC is currently operating below its 144-youth capacity, raising questions about claims of staffing constraints. “The Sheriff’s Office’s sudden decision to stop transportation, followed by an arbitrary and hasty deadline for transitioning facility control, suggests decisions are being made for administrative convenience rather than for youth wellbeing and community benefit,” added Aerris Newton, Government Affairs Director of Stand for Children.

The coalition emphasizes two immediate priorities in the letter:

Resume Transportation Services: Reinstate safe, private transportation to Juvenile Court, with appropriate protocols to ensure court access.
Develop a Responsible Transition Timeline: Extend the rushed December 2024 transition deadline to align with the County’s fiscal year, allowing time for proper budget planning, staff training, and a clear operational framework.

Copies of the letter were also sent to Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon, Mayor Lee Harris, and the Shelby County Commission, calling for immediate collaborative solutions. “We’re asking all stakeholders – the Sheriff’s Office, Juvenile Court, county leadership, and community organizations – to come together and develop realistic solutions that prioritize youth development while ensuring public safety,” said Newton. “We need a structured transition plan that aligns with our county’s fiscal reality and maintains essential services throughout the process.”

Stand for Children and partners are still waiting for the Sheriff’s response to the open letter. Action News 5 published this story about the open letter, and we are planning to follow up with more actions to increase pressure on the SCSO in the coming weeks. The full letter with the signatures we have received so far is below.

Open Letter to SCSO re: Youth Transportation Crisis and Detention Center Transition Download

Local and Statewide Organizations Set the Record Straight on Blended Sentencing

Legislation | 04/18/2024

Cardell Orrin Executive Director

Local and statewide organizations sent the below letter to state elected officials, Memphis Mayor Paul Young, and other Memphis/Shelby County leaders to set the record straight on what “blended sentencing” (as proposed in HB0430) truly means for our young people. As amended by Speaker Sexton, blended sentencing could result in children as young as 14 years old getting sentenced to an automatic five years in adult prison upon turning 19, without the right to a jury trial and even if they have not committed another offense.

A representative from our coalition hand-delivered the letter to HB0430 / SB0624’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, during the People Against the State of TN rally on Wednesday, April 17. Today (Thursday, April 18), we sent it to Mayor Young, Mayor Harris, DA Mulroy, Judge Sugarmon, and other Memphis/Shelby County Leaders to correct misinformation and misunderstanding about blended sentencing that continue to proliferate in our community. The disturbing (and potentially unconstitutional) measures in this bill demonstrate the dangers in ongoing encouragement for the state to pass tough-on-crime legislation, as we saw with the recent letter to Gov. Lee from the Memphis Chamber and Chairman’s Circle.

We all want to see the thriving, flourishing, future-ready Memphis that Mayor Young outlined in his 100 Days Address, but throwing our young people into a cycle of punishment without a chance for rehabilitation will not lead us to that inspiring vision. We encourage our local elected and unelected leaders to do everything in their power to fight this bill in favor of enacting and funding restorative, rehabilitative, and preventive solutions.

Dear Shelby County and Memphis Leaders,

We are writing as your constituents and organizations concerned about community safety and rehabilitation for our youth. Many of our organizations and community members from various stakeholder groups have called for a means through which rehabilitative services can be provided to youth after their 19th birthday, without sending those youth to adult prison facilities.

Some of these organizations have also expressed support for an alternative to transferring youth to adult court when they are accused of committing serious offenses, particularly when they are close to aging out of the juvenile system. Generally referred to as “blended sentencing”, the term has referred to a broad range of potential policy implementations that may or may not align with goals to support youth, increase safety, limit harm, and prevent net widening for young people into the adult system.

Unfortunately, current legislation being presented as blended sentencing legislation does not meet these goals. We believe it is important to be clear on the current bills making their way through the legislature and encourage our elected leaders to stand against those that do not deliver on the initial promise of “blended sentencing.”

For months, HB0430 has been marketed as the blended sentencing proposal that would establish a rehabilitative alternative for youth considered for adult transfer. We are tremendously concerned and disappointed that the current bill does not deliver on this promise, primarily due to amendments from Speaker Sexton. Instead of creating alternatives to transfer, the bill:

establishes a new mandatory transfer pathway,
explicitly authorizes youth to be incarcerated in adult prisons without the right to a jury trial,
and forces judges to incarcerate youth in adult prisons after they have completed their juvenile sentences, even if they have not committed any new offenses.

As amended, this bill increases harm to youth, removes due process, and opens the floodgates to send young people to adult prison. In short, the bill now bears little resemblance to what we originally believed blended sentencing would bring to our community.

While we were told that blended sentencing could help to reduce youth imprisonment and recidivism by providing new rehabilitative services for young people within the juvenile system without the need to transfer them to adult prison, there is no funding attached to the bill for anything other than incarceration. The fiscal note on the bill dated March 5, 2024 has no mention of new spending on rehabilitative services, supervision, community-based services, or anything other than custody provided by the Department of Children’s services for youth while they remain in the juvenile system. Simply stated, the state fiscal assessment says that this bill will provide no new funds that might help prevent a young person from being sent to adult prison.

Similarly, we were told that blended sentencing could support young people by extending juvenile jurisdiction to provide a more developmentally appropriate environment and additional supports for emerging adults under 25. Once again, there is no language in the bill about rehabilitative services for youth over 19, only a statement that the youth will be committed “to the supervision of the department of correction” and that the youth “in a secure facility must be housed separate and removed from the general population.” The state fiscal assessment determined this bill will REQUIRE increased incarceration expenditures by the Department of Correction for youth over 19. This portion of the bill seems to be half-baked based on the promised solutions blended sentencing could provide, and ends up being a proposal to simply incarcerate young people in adult prisons under the false claim of “rehabilitation.”

From our analysis, HB0430 will not meet the calls from community members, organizations, and elected officials for increasing safety, decreasing the direct transfer of youth to adult prison, and increasing youth rehabilitation opportunities. As it currently stands, the bill clearly does not align with our shared commitment to fostering environments where young community members can learn from their mistakes and grow into responsible adults.

We must challenge proponents of blended sentencing to safeguard the rights and rehabilitation of our children. We encourage you to stand against any proposal that fails to affirmatively answer the following essential questions. This list serves as a quick and straightforward litmus test to evaluate the merits of proposed blended sentencing legislation:

Is the proposal limited to older youth who have committed serious offenses who might otherwise not have time to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system?
Does the proposal provide additional resources and opportunities for rehabilitation to reduce recidivism and improve access to education, employment, and other outcomes for young people?
Does the proposal avoid mandatory transfers of youth to adult court or adult facilities, allowing for individualized consideration based on the specifics of each case?
Are there due process protections comparable to those in transfer proceedings before a youth is sent to adult court, ensuring that we are not creating an easier path to adult prison with less due process?
Do young people have an explicit right to counsel in all proceedings?
Is there a presumption that the adult sentence is suspended unless the state actively seeks its imposition?
Do the criteria for deciding whether a youth will receive the adult portion of their sentence offer multiple avenues to demonstrate successful rehabilitation, avoiding triggers based on non-criminal behavior?
Does a youth have the right to petition for a review of their sentence?
Does the adult sentence include probation, parole, or other community based options that allow youth to reintegrate into society?

Recognizing that HB0430 cannot answer “yes” to these questions, we should ask every proponent of the original promise of “blended sentencing” where they stand on ensuring that any final law meets these requirements. This may be Speaker Sexton’s version of blended sentencing, but it is not what we have discussed for the last two years. We encourage all of our elected officials and community leaders who have expressed support for blended sentencing in the past to let it be known that this is not the form of blended sentencing that Memphis & Shelby County want or need.

In Support of Safety and Our Young People,

ACLU of Tennessee
Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis (BCCM)
Just City
Memphis Artists for Change
Memphis for All
MICAH – Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope
Shelby Countywide Juvenile Justice Consortium
Stand for Children – Tennessee
The Equity Alliance
Whole Child Strategies
Youth Justice Action Council (YJAC)

Trigger Warning: School security staff once again use pepper spray against students

Momentum Memphis | 01/12/2023

Cardell Orrin Executive Director

According to the MSCS Handbook, possession of pepper spray is a suspendible offense, yet the adults in charge of protecting student safety are free to use this harmful chemical agent against students at their discretion with little to no accountability. This excessive use of force by school officers and/or school resource officers (SROs) to break up a fight between students at Melrose perpetuates a toxic culture of criminalizing and endangering youth in schools under the misguided assumption that adult-inflicted violence somehow makes young people safer.

In 2021, Momentum Memphis worked alongside students to call on the Board of Education to remove law enforcement acting as SROs from all public schools in our “Counselors Not Cops” campaign. To our great disappointment, after all that effort the Board voted unanimously to renew their contract with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. This decision effectively puts our students in danger of unnecessary interaction with law enforcement, often without parental consent.

This school year, school officers and/or SROs have been using pepper spray against young people at an alarming frequency–almost once a week by the District’s own numbers. It should go without saying that chemical agents should never be used against our students. By doing so, the school officers, SROs, and other adults in charge are setting a dangerous example– effectively saying that using more violence is the best way to resolve conflict. When students respond to conflict with more violence, they face the risk of suspension or even expulsion; yet the adults responsible for ensuring student safety face little to no consequences when they respond with violence.

In October 2022, Board Member Sheleah Harris called on the rest of the Board to pass a Code of Conduct for school security staff that would hold them to a higher standard. We stand with Board Member Harris, and we stress that the Code of Conduct would include requirements for trauma-informed de-escalation training and practices.

Security staff have a responsibility to protect ALL students, including those who may be in conflict with each other. We will continue to advocate with and for our young people so that these violent incidents become things of the past, paving the way for prevention and restorative justice to come first and foremost.