 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of Justice in the Balance. I am James Milan, and today I am joined with, excuse me, joined by the Citizens for Juvenile Justice, let's say, leadership team, or part of that team. Certainly Leon Smith, the Executive Director, is here with us, as is Sana Fatal, who is the Deputy Director. I welcome you both. Thanks so much for taking time out of your days to join us. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. We want to get into, as quickly as possible, a conversation about just what it's all about. But before that, we can never resist at this time. Just asking, checking in with you guys. How are you doing? Clearly, you're in your homes as am I. How's it going for you? Leon, how about you, Scar? It's been very busy. As we will talk about, COVID-19 has posed a lot of challenges for us as advocates in the field, as parents, and as you can imagine, it has posed significant challenges for the children and the families that we advocate for. So engaging in the work, making sure the state agencies are doing what they should do to meet the needs of these populations. It's been pretty nonstop. It's been very busy, but it's work that we're really pleased to do. And that you're able to do, obviously, at that nonstop pace continue to do. And how about you, Sana? How are things going in your home? I've learned a lot about privilege during these, being able to just do this work from home is a privilege in its own. Being able to be with my family and not worry about my family, the things I worry about my family are not anywhere near the things that we worry about for the young people we advocate for. The challenge has been, how do we do our traditional advocacy and our organizing in ways that have different ways of engaging people and understanding, well, what are the needs of people? Because when you're not face-to-face, you're not able to hear, well, this is when a government agency says this, well, this is how the impact is happening on us on the ground. And we've had to adapt in these eight or so, 10 weeks to make sure it's off-time. It's hard to keep the exact track of how to get that information, making sure that we are accountable, like as advocates we have to be accountable, so that we are able to raise the voice of the people we advocate for. So we've had to adapt, how do we do that? And a lot of it was our partnerships with parents, young people and allies. So it's, we know we're physically apart, it has brought a lot of us together in ways to say, but we're trying to see one vision for young people in our state for all young people. And if I can take a quick, or ask you guys to take a quick step back and just get a sense of what the history and the mission and the operation of Citizens for Juvenile Justice is. So how long has the organization, for instance, let's start with, how long has the organization been in existence? Well, we just celebrated our 25th year, last year, we were very proud of that. We're the only independent and non-profit statewide organization that works exclusively to improve the juvenile justice as well as other youth serving systems in Massachusetts. We do that work on a systemic level, so we don't have individual clients, but we look to hold systems accountable through four primary pillars of our work, advocacy, coalition building with center referenced and reaching out and connecting with grassroots and community based organizations, research, and in public education, which has been a really big part of our work since the beginning of the pandemic in ensuring that communities and young people are informed of what state governments are doing relative to this pandemic. So as you just said, you guys don't either represent or work with any individuals, specifically, rather, you are operating on a systemic or policy level, basically, ensuring that the systems are operating the way they're supposed to or improve from what. So it entails both working directly with state agencies and state agency heads, but also the legislative work that's in the leads on our behalf, we were actively involved in the criminal justice reform act of 2018, for example, you look at some of the key provisions there, raising the lower age of juvenile court jurisdiction, expanded opportunities of diversion for young people, those were part of the campaign of the juvenile justice coalition would see if JJ conveys. So in no particular, I'm going to let you guys kind of handle the narrative flow of the interview because what I'm interested in what we are interested in, I should say, is the fact that of course, while this series in general tends to focus on issues and in policies and programs that apply to people involved in the justice in the justice system, I understand that the folks that you are advocating on behalf of and working on behalf of, they have a whole life and an intersection with the justice system for these juveniles is just part of that long, well, not so long, but part of that life that they are living and is connected to the other parts. So in whatever order you would like and however you want to handle it, just take us through the arc of a typical client that you would be, again, not working with personally, but that you have in mind or that you work on behalf of. Well, look at it in this way, we have a target population of young people from birth through their mid 20s. So if you look at, you hear terms like school to prison pipeline or the trauma to prison pipeline in the child welfare system, you see young people begin to encounter systems, you know, four years old, young people, you know, children in preschool who are being suspended from school or a five year old who goes into the child welfare system and is moved around. Things happen that exacerbate trauma that these young people have been through and that can drive them throughout these youth serving systems and later into the criminal justice system. So we look at that broad range of not only young people who are currently in the juvenile justice system, but that arc that leads young people into it as well as, you know, young people into their early 20s where science tells us their brains are still developing and they still need to have a therapeutic and rehabilitative approach. So, and we really want to boil down what we do is these young people in Massachusetts, juvenile justice system, child welfare systems, they are coming to the table having experienced trauma and they have a sort of mental, emotional, physical health concerns. During a pandemic like this, which yes, it impacts us all for these young people who already have these mental health challenges, these emotional health challenges, emotional health challenges, they're only exacerbated by all the stressors that are going on during this difficult time. The rates of mental health needs for young people in the system are incredibly high. So, you know, for all of us to step outside of ourselves and you take a teenager who's had a life of trauma, now they're in a situation where they're incarcerated and separated from their family and they're worried or concerned or if they're fortunate enough to be released, they're returning to communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by COVID and they have family members that they worry about and there's family stressors. So, you know, looking at the stress and anxiety and all of these other factors that are challenges for young people, we try to advocate to make sure that young people, the help that they need, when they need it and the state systems are accountable for doing that. And how hard is it, how hard is it to do that? What are the, you know, what are the particular challenges that you guys are facing, you know, day to day, week to week, month to month? Well, let's Sina jump in. Are you talking about COVID related? No, actually, and thank you for clarifying that because I do want to say that as Leon, as you aptly pointed out, it has been a common theme in many conversations we've had in this series and others over the last number of weeks that this situation that we are in now has exacerbated existing inequities of all sorts and certainly areas in which our society is falling short under normal circumstances and populations that are underserved under normal circumstances, it's even worse. But I do want, I am asking about kind of the, in general, the work that you do on, again, normal circumstances. Nonetheless, Leon has just laid out a number of the, of the either institutions, government agencies, et cetera, that you have to work with or hold accountable or both. I'm just wondering whether that piece or other pieces are particularly challenging. And if you can just give us a sense of, yeah, just what you're, what you're up against in a sense, in terms of trying to do the work that you do. One example, we have a legislative, we have legislative campaigns each legislative session. One of our key initiatives at Seneca and elaborate, Moran, is seeking to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to bring 18, 19 and 20 year olds into the juvenile justice system. I was, I was fortunate enough to be a member of a task force which looked at these issues. And what we've learned is when you look at the entirety of the adult criminal justice system, the worst outcomes, the highest level of recidivism are for these emerging adults because they are, these are young people, 18 and 19 year olds who are still in high school in some cases that are put into an adult correctional system that is punishment rather than being in a rehabilitative system. So you speak of challenges as challenges to push a system that is used to things being a certain way to embrace the new science, to embrace all these new studies and to pivot and to do something different when what we've been doing clearly isn't working. Then you have COVID-19 happen and you have all these closures in the midst of a legislative session which only makes that push that much more challenging. That's an example of how the legend of Sisyphus were pushing the boulder up the hill anyway and then the boulder gets bigger in a time of COVID. Yes, Anna, did you want to? And I think, like I mentioned earlier, another challenge is we see what's good. Our advocacy is based on what we understand as what is the best science, what are best practices, so things that we can study, but also it has to be grounded. And so when we talk to young people and they say, well, the biggest issue right now is around the digital divide or how we're going to be, how discipline is going to look different for us in schools. Well, when I have a conversation with the state on how they're going to expand education, they're not talking at the level of, well, what are individual schools going to be, how are they going to be disciplined in kids and they're going to work. We're going to be pushing out young people out of education. So push out, is the idea is you have all of these state, our society builds state agencies or systems that has a goal, a societal goal. For children, that societal goal is how can we support them so that they can transition positively into a healthy adulthood. Better transition statement towards children, that is it. Transitioning young people into a healthy adulthood. So whenever any part of that system that says you don't belong here, you are somewhat, you aren't an other, you don't deserve, you are not deserving, you are somehow we want, you don't belong, we want to punish you, you're not eligible, we are pushing child serving that helps young people and the system that always accepts people are like our correctional systems. So we're at every point, if at every point in our child services system we're told, no, no, no, no, no, that's where we have that push up into the developmental justice system. So we have to be on this thing, this legislation or this policy change, it sounds good. First thing, the first thing we look at is if it is a race neutral policy, it is probably going to exacerbate our racial disparities. In Massachusetts we have, we may be progressive and blue, but we have some of the worst racial disparities, major decision points in our systems in the country. Not everything, but in some of what when we have racial disparities, we are in the bottom of the country. But we hide that because we are a progressive state and because it's a smaller number, so you don't really see it, that's the first thing we do is, is this racially, is what you're proposing racially? Yeah, if I can, sorry to interject, but I just want to kind of elaborate a little bit or dig a little bit deeper on what you just said, because I think it's a really important point, I know that this is one of the crux points in arguments around affirmative action programs, etc. What you're saying is if the legislation, if it looks race neutral or fair to everybody regardless of race, ethnicity, etc., it's actually going to operate to the disadvantage of disadvantaged populations. I think that's what you're saying, yes? I'm going to give you two examples to put this into context. So one example is pre-COVID, one of the lowest incarceration rates in the country, including juvenile incarceration. However, so for the past two decades, we've been doing a lot of reforms in our juvenile system to reduce the number of young people who are in locked facilities. Young people's behavior has not changed since I was a kid, since my kids are kids. These are our responses changed. So in the last two decades, when our juvenile system has moved towards what's called a positive youth development, this whole idea of young people developing into a healthy adulthood, we have seen that the number of young people into the juvenile justice system has decreased significantly. So the number of legal systems involved was it was in the 1990s. However, if you break those numbers down by race and ethnicity, what you are going to see is the biggest drop has actually, the benefit has mostly been to white young people. The number of black and Latino young people has also decreased during that period of time, however, at a much lower rate. A fewer number of young people who are detained or locked up, they are much, their rate, their higher rate of black and Latino kids. And in Massachusetts, that data point is actually worse for Latino kids. With COVID, and I think this may have been addressed in one of your previous episodes, something like the critical care, the decision that DPH came up with that says, you know, if Massachusetts reaches a point where we have all these people, we have more people who need ventilators or life saving care than we have hospital capacity, we are going to be race neutral. We're going to be socioeconomic neutral. We're going to be all these things. There are certain things we're going to likelihood of survival. Well, when you, that sounds, if I'm not a doctor, sounds medically fine, doesn't sound malicious in any way. And I think the statement that says you're not going to take someone's status into consideration is like, oh, we're not going to harm people because they're, they're not seen as a value, they're not seen as valuable to the society. But the flip side of it is, well, health disparities where you have lower access to preventative health care, higher rates of poor health, poor health care because of the structural racism. Well, you say, well, you know, we have more, we're seeing across the country, more black people are dying from, disproportionately dying, being impacted and dying and hospitalized. And there's not, I think we can, that's an example of, well, you know, the state has reversed course based on activism by what people are saying, like if you are doing race neutral, you are going to not only say, well, it's not, the problem with race, racism, partial racism, is to say, well, it's not my fault, this came before me. But I say, well, you're not acknowledging that when the decision comes to you, yes, you cannot change or have a responsibility to say, I cannot continue to exacerbate through racial disparities. So kind of hopeful to see how that plays out in the COVID conversation statewide around those public health considerations. Let me ask you about that basic situation you've just laid out. Are the government agencies, the legislators, et cetera, the folks that you are working in conjunction with or negotiating with or however you want to describe it, do they understand what it is that you have just described? Do they understand that something that looks race neutral on its face is going to, because of the natural operation of our societies and the inherent privileges in these individual situations as they'll play out, the inherent privileges that white people enjoy in all of those situations means that something that starts off race neutral or is on the text on its face, race neutral, is not going to operate that way. Do they understand that and or is it that you have to convince them of that as well? I'll say this. This is one of the biggest struggles that we have because Massachusetts is really a textbook example of why it's so more publicly available data at every juvenile or criminal justice decision point that is disaggregated by race and ethnicity in real time or as fresh of data as possible because it would illustrate these disparities where they are and give us the ability to then be able to work on them. It's also why it's so damaging that conversely we are one of the least transparent states in the country when it comes to having publicly available data disaggregated by our race. Going back to 2007, CFJJ has been pushing for greater data transparency in these justice systems and it has been a continuous struggle and I think it's because it goes beyond the surface of that common narrative which locally and across the country, which is that Massachusetts does greater criminal justice because their system is so much smaller. I always use the analogy that Massachusetts is like a shiny apple that looks really perfect on the outside but you bite in and then there's a rot underneath the surface and that rot are of the worst racial and ethnic disparities so in many ways we have a sterling reputation when it comes to juvenile and criminal justice but it hides these disparities and the push pull that we constantly go through is saying look it's not about making anyone quote unquote look bad we need to see we know these disparities are there we need to see them need to see it what decision points are they at which kids get a reign are they just in commitment so that we can then you know shine the light shine that spotlight on and work on them and so what I would suggest is that there is an awareness that these disparities exist and people don't want those disparities elevated into the light because instead of looking at them bringing brought into the light as a benefit and that we can work on them to make them better there's an idea that oh does it make this decision maker look better that decision maker look better this person look like they're racist when in reality it's really all about making a system that's more equitable for young people and do you could you possibly cite example positive negative your choice of you know doing the work that you're doing and what that resulted in for instance you were saying that you you you guys were a significant voice in the formulation of aspects of the criminal justice reform bill that passed a couple years ago here in massachusetts perhaps something that you did along those lines or just again a couple one or two concrete examples of the kinds of legislation or policy making and changing that you that you have been involved with i'll give one example and then i'll pass the center one is in massachusetts we now have a juvenile justice policy and data board which is housed in the office of the child advocate which is trying to get at some of these issues meaning requiring there to be data sharing between all of these youth justice state agencies this is this is something that we were pushing before that asking you know state agencies to voluntarily come to the table and share information and share data but now that's statutorily required and we do sit on not just a data subcommittee but also there's a community-based intervention subcommittee just looking at how to make diversion equitable and not have justice by geography so that's an example of we're not transparent we don't have state agencies talking to each other when in reality um a kid who's a dcf kid is also a kid that's in the juvenile court and is also ending up in bys so sharing that data would allow us so much more information to say wow this is the number of crossover kids we have and these kids have these unique needs so now let's plan how to best serve these kids best on the base on the data having the the jjp ad it puts us on the road to hopefully getting that kind of shared data to raise the level of advocacy for young people so that's one example that i would give okay and just for clarification purpose before we move to sonna um what is jjp ad juvenile justice policy and data board so um it's statutorily created the office of the child advocate in massachusetts community um and so they have a they have both the board and then they have one subcommittee on data one subcommittee on community-based interventions to benefit young people and then they have a subcommittee that's based on um trauma and the best way to provide services to trauma impacting young people so it's structured in such a way to we talk about that sort of cradle to prison pipeline it's structured in such a way to get at all these issues that impact young people throughout that arc okay and sonna so part of your question got cut off so let me rephrase it to make sure i'm answering the right question um so your question is what we have accomplished to address some of these are the things that we're looking to accomplish um well an example perhaps of something that you have feel like you have accomplished and then happy also to hear about things that are on on the agenda and that you're aiming at okay and we haven't touched any of the covid stuff right so it's all like background okay um so um like lian mentioned the 2018 criminal justice law there's a few things in there that pass that we are very very parents we sort of like the work that we do isn't just you know for these young people that we advocate for we actually advocating for our own kids as well and we see all these you know these kids are just as our own um so um two that i like to share with my my friends who don't understand the legal system is one is the rate is the age of the court from age of seven until the age of 12 so a second grader before the july of 2018 could have been arrested and we did have a number of young people a little over a hundred a hundred a little over a hundred young people under the age of 12 which is like our middle school cut off who were in had open juvenile court cases at that people disproportionately kids of color disproportionately were kids arrested in school and disproportionately kids who are involved in the child welfare system so sort of like that that's what sort of impression so that's one of the things we were able we were happy to do another one is you know as a parent if your own child gets in trouble who would be the first person you want them to talk to right at your parent right in massachusetts we did not have that confidentiality it was something we had to fight for for a long time but if my child tells me something when i know something that my child did i need to be on my child's side no matter what this is why we have an attorney client privilege because a client cannot navigate the legal system there's no other person that i can think of that needs another person as a child needs their parent to navigate something that has such a huge impact on their life and just the the risk of loss of their liberty that they could be incarcerated and not having a being able to talk freely to a parent that was something that that was 18 and it was not an easy fight we actually had to fight for this and was pretty very visible fight on the front pages on the boss and global on those issues the other thing we were able to do which had a significant impact on the number of young people entering the juvenile justice system is the issue of school based arrest jj partnered with the massachusetts and the national aclu and we looked at why are kids being arrested out of school when we first started that they were like no no don't look there's nothing to see here we are only arresting these bad kids they're only arresting them because they bring drugs into school they bring weapons they're doing violent you know violent behavior use arrest as a tool for kids who are not we don't think deemed necessary so we looked at the police we actually got the police reports and analyzed this report and we found that the vast majority of kids being arrested were for non-violent non-drug non-weapon verbal misconduct that they were being disrespectful being new but that was that was their crime but the other thing we found was we know kids again equally do this all over the state but you are if you a child of her um Latino or if you are a child with mental with with this you had a higher risk of being arrested if you're a child of color with special needs your the increase was much more so you have um so we saw a lot of kids with autism or other kind of our aspects were in a special education plan that their behavior was tied directly um or that disability or um but the response of the school was let's get a police officer to remove that child from the school because that's how we can do it so we fought that we fought to talk about those non-violent all only verbal the first three months after the passage of law percent drop of young people being referred to school so it wasn't just a school-based arrest but it tripled on across the board on all these non like non-violent low-level offenses for young people where a state was like but we have we need to find a different response to that behavior rather than arrest and prosecution and um and trying to keep more the records of young people more confidential that came in the 2018 law but we're still working on it we talked about our uh plans our our hopes to get young older teenagers so the 18 19 and 20 year olds out of the adult criminal justice and into more into the rehabilitative juvenile justice system similar to others these that serve that age group under the transition transition age youth component so they're considered under the child and adolescent unit of an agency rather than adult agency we're hoping that the legal system also follows suit and actually that that that's an example that the stark difference that the adult corrections versus the juvenile system is responding to polar opposite and just highlights the why we need we need to be pushing continue pushing for these boards okay um let us let us uh indeed now move on to the specific impacts that you guys are are seeing as well as dealing with uh both yourselves and your work and more importantly in a lot of ways the populations that you represent um what are the impacts of covid um on this on this work or in this area so one area that i think is affecting children across the commonwealth but it's particularly acute for young people in the juvenile justice system is related to education so all of us who are parents as we all know full well um there's a disruption in the middle of the school year um schools are now closed and there has been a rocky transition from your your child your students sitting in school in class to now being at your dining room table or a desk in their room in front of a laptop so you know it's been a disruption for all kids but i know i stand in the position of privilege knowing that um i have internet i have the technology available my son goes to a school where he was able to get on google classroom right away um we still have a situation now where 40 percent of kids in the juvenile justice system don't have that access right now as we speak um and there's so many levels and layers to it so you know you're a high school sophomore and junior um and you're in a juvenile justice system you've made a step but you're still trying to get your grades up because you aspire to go to college and now because of covid you're facing a situation where you're looking at a pass or a fail well it's great you don't fail the year but what does that do you're getting sorts of aspirations um a major issue and this is again it's an issue for all young people but when you consider back that nearly 60 percent of committed youth in d y s having an individualized education plan or an iep is particularly acute relates to special education so you have students who again these students with emotional disabilities learning disabilities school has been a struggle since they were very young and because of that they need that specialized instruction they need that help from a paraprofessional um in the classroom they need those related services like counseling when they get frustrated in a in a classroom they have that but now that they're removed from that even if they're fortunate enough to have internet access and they're fortunate enough to have um some sort of scoology or google classroom or some sort of online um access access is not the same thing as having the related services and specialized instruction that you need to access that curriculum um and so we're seeing across the commonwealth you know young people you have a sign in to you know google classroom and you have the ability to reach out to a teacher if you need help but we know these are students who need much more hands on help so again it's impacting students and communities but given just the high um overlap of students with ips in the juvenile justice system it's having an even greater impact on young people there when you look at you know at least d y s is making moves consistently to get students the access they need for young adults who are in the adult correctional system be they the county houses of corrections or or um doc the department of corrections some of those young people are getting nothing at all you know when covid started um a very punitive approach took place there were lockdowns and so these are young people who the education system has felt and they're just trying to get a gd they're just trying to get to the end and now they're getting no instruction whatsoever so we know that when we talk about factors um that reduced recidivism that lead to better outcomes none is more important than education and yet these young people who are system involved um that that core thing we always say education matters education is the future well education is in chaos for these young people right now um yes and and son are you did you have anything to elaborate on what leon was saying or in addition to again talking about the specific impacts now um that you're noting um of of covid on on your populations so leon was going to talk about education i was going to talk about child welfare so that's right and he did yeah we lost you for a little bit so i talked about education and special education and the impact on uh sort of d y s with their high special population and then the adult some of the kids in the adult system yes they're over 18 and 19 and 20 but there's still kids of not having education so um i was thinking maybe you could talk a little bit about the impact on the child welfare kids who flow in okay um thank you both for your patience with the technology this new world that we're in right um so another risk factor of young people entering our juvenile justice system is child welfare involvement that was another uh research project we had done we anecdotally for years everybody knew like you know if you're in the child welfare system as uh you have a higher so what we tried to look into is what some most young people who are in the child welfare system do not enter our child well in our juvenile justice system however most young people in the juvenile justice system have have have a current or past history of child welfare involvement so we try to figure out what what is that overlap what makes someone what's what in the child welfare system of entering the juvenile justice system um so we have a report cosmos opportunity and shutting down the trauma to cousin pipeline they're all at our website um excellent reports if i say so myself um but they were really eye-opening in terms of what are the risk factors so what we know is um five thousand young people in massachusetts have have an open child welfare case but only 20 of them are actually enter our foster care system so that's something that most people don't understand that most families are not in the most kids are not in the foster care system however if you are one of those one in five kids who enters the foster care system your likelihood of entering the justice the juvenile justice system um by um some national studies it's about um increases likelihood by three times um just just the removal from home another risk factor is the fact that you bounce in placement so just because you're removed there are still things because some kids need to be um but not not every child's experience in foster care is similar some kids some kids go or remove for a little bit the parents get whatever support they need then the the child gets returned it's a small time frame other times it's a longer involvement and the child is placed with a family member an extended so it gives the family a little bit more flexibility and time so that they can deal with whatever whatever issues they are especially if it's issues that are things like substance abuse or mental or mental health issues that need longer period of time to recovery where a child can still be stable with with kin and then there's for those who cannot be placed that be placed long for a long period of time find or not know where we start seeing the risk factors kids who get placed bouncing from foster home from foster home that's one of the hugest risk factors we saw in massachusetts as well as nationally and we can and is supported by clinic by clinical observation where kids are bounced from place to place so every every adult they encountered tells them well you don't belong here this is there's something is wrong with me or something is wrong with every adult around my life around me and i don't trust them and i hate everybody around me so they they either internalize they say something's wrong with me or they externalize where the behavior comes out is more aggressive then there'd be then that's being that's labeled that while you're an aggressive child or an assaultive then that becomes well we can arrest you that's the system another path is that kids who bounce tend to be placed that they may end up in more non-community based and in residential homes and those are that was another area where we saw a significant increase uh jumped in number of kids being arrested and entering the juvenile justice system are those who have been previously placed so knowing that pre-covid that that was those are the risk factors we are doing our advocacy right now to say well how can we um knowing that those are risk factors how can we make sure that our COVID advocacy addresses some of those concerns so we want to look at some of those things actually being exacerbated by policies that have been developed because of COVID so so for example um i told you one of the risk factors is you know if someone if a family does need some kind of support well what kind of support can you have can you get support in the community so that the family is intact and you get supported or can you um does the child need first things that was approved in the state was removal of children so we can remove children out of their homes as an emergency being able to get the family's support was much later to sort of it's coming in later um the fact that you know can if the kids were on the path to reunification that has not those you know not considered an emergency um being able to get supports for uh in in the court cases to that like a social worker to help a family meet some of those conditions so once the courts are open they're like the family's in a better place those have been slow to happen and have not been approved as an emergency family visitation has been very very slow for a young person to convict is to stay connected to their family in best of circumstances when you're in a situation a public health crisis with a lot of misinformation you don't know what's right and what's wrong there's a lot of anxiety you're a lot of the your connection social connections your your educational connections are not there needs so if so if a child is in foster care and has a plan to reconnect with their family their ability to be connected to their parents and their siblings if the siblings are in foster care is key before COVID and now that's COVID it means like well you need someone who's going to be with you stable no matter what those have been very very slow um and the guide that kind of the guidance is coming out that is not it's not prioritizing that though those family connections happen they are working and we recognize that some of those need to happen and we need to let the staff who are considered essential workers of state agencies that are doing this work need to be also protected but we want to make sure that when our advocacy is but those are bring back online and not something that we can wait on when things are when settled down um so we're also looking at you know young people who are in group homes group homes because they are small facilities with a lot of young people who cannot do social distancing how can we are there ways to say well if in a more community-based accelerate those are there ways to make sure that young that families are about to be unified we can get those services earlier on and work more intensely with families rather than at a the traditional time I think that you know certainly I and I think by proxy my our audience have gotten a really comprehensive view of the the complication and the overlapping issues and stressors on the on these young people who you're advocating for but also on the work that you're doing how many different levers need to be pulled etc the question that just keeps coming up for me and and also I have to tell you for for Sarah my co-producer is what can we do is it is it a matter of increasing awareness do we need to be putting more pressure on our lawmaker tell us what should people who are listening to this galvanized by what you're saying what should we be doing sorry I cut you off because my Mike said it with your tongue done so there's a few things that we're working on and we would love your audience to support on so one is in terms of in the child welfare we're working on how can we provide services particularly one of our areas of focus is our young people who are aging out of foster care not again that is one of the risk factors of legal system involvement you age out without a permanent family then you're more likely to end up homeless without education and with and higher likelihood in massachusetts to follow other states in the country and some national advocacy to do a moratorium and young people aging out so if you're able to services as someone who had is about to turn 18 or has turned 18 and is about to turn 21 and you can get voluntary services from the department of children education employment and housing and housing is really really key during covid we want to have that moratorium in massachusetts so that just because we turn 18 or you turn 21 during covid doesn't mean you are on your own we want to make sure that we have a delay in that aging out a second is this emergency housing for young people and that is a resources allocation what we know is young people who are vulnerable who move out like if you're in a foster home and you engage in behavior that is covered risky because you went out to hang out with your friends and did not do social distancing and you live with a foster family and it's underlying health conditions where does a young person go if a foster family doesn't feel they're safe and they need to be quarantined or and that we're seeing like i know bridge over troubled waters in boston is is feeling a lot of these calls like i'm in i'm 17 and i have no place to live are aged out and i have no place to live where can they live and that's a research funding specifically to house young people who are child who are legal suspects in our from um from our child welfare system to be able to access you know some kind of housing so that they're not homeless during covid we're also looking at young the i don't know there's legislation right now to look at decarceration or reducing the number of adults so no in the juvenile system we didn't get a chance to talk about this do is has been doing what advocates across the country have been asking their juvenile systems to do on their own with with with allies but without having to do a lot of pressure trying to keep how to keep young people in the community more um still under the you're looking at the adult system to do similar how can we reduce the number of individuals who can be who are incarcerated and have them in community-based supervision we have the legal capacity to do that but we need legislative action to say yes this is something we do during covid um we don't want to have our our correctional facilities to be petri dishes because that in auspice in massachusetts in correctional facilities you have staff going in and out and that's what how comes in but then once it goes out and it spreads in the in our communities so it's in our public health and our public safety benefit to find alternative ways to hold people accountable and do it safely without having to rely on our our model of putting people in that he's aware i'm going to quote bristol county has a has a correction the sheriff there no i'm just kidding six six feet apart is practically impossible in any correctional setting in any jail in any prison in any state in any county anywhere and that was in response to an sjc lawsuit and that was his final response and i'm not sure you have something to add well and just to piggyback um this taking the statements that senna just made and paying him forward um i would encourage people to support our campaign to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction because um these emerging adults these 18 19 and 20 year olds we know they're they're at a distinct stage where they have great potential for rehabilitation and they need developmentally appropriate programming that they are not going to get in the adult system and as a general rule we know that them being in adult systems outside of coven um they have the highest recidivism rate they are getting collateral consequences by picking up a corridor that's going to negatively impact their future moving forward but then you add coven on you know within these adult facilities there's a perception out there that because young people have a lower morbidity rate that they're less at risk um and unfortunately that has messed with the correctional mindset um so that these young people are more at risk you know while they are inside these facilities they have limited family engagement so arguably um the most vulnerable um people these young people in the adult system who have these high rates of trauma and and mental and emotional health issues have this limited family engagement which is leading to even higher levels of trauma and you know when you look at what the juvenile system is doing when you look at how dys without the pressure of being named in a lawsuit is moving to decarcerate while at the same time these county houses of correction are fighting against the two for nail it's just a reminder that raise the age is good sound policy under normal circumstances but with these young people being at risk having in some cases no access to education being put in situations to compromise their health it's more urgent and more relevant than ever you know i think it probably goes without saying at this point for anybody who's been listening to our conversation uh that you guys are uh you know committed deeply committed to this cause and there is so much work to do i want to acknowledge that as i also have to say we need to to uh draw a conclusion on to this conversation even though um i can readily admit that there's so much more uh that we could be covered so we'll have to save that uh for a future conversation i know you guys are going to be continuing to plow away um nobily at what you are doing and i hope that we can get back together again sometime in the not too distant future and celebrate perhaps some more accomplishments um on behalf of these vulnerable youth populations that you guys are advocating and working for we want to thank you both for joining us today of course and also for the work that you're doing again lots and lots of us care about what happens here relatively few of us are working to make those things happen so our appreciation to you very much um leon smith the executive director and santa farrell the deputy director of citizens for juvenile justice joining us today here on justice in the balance thank you again guys um we'll talk to you again soon i'm jane go ahead thank you