Criminalizing Childhood: When the Justice System Fails America’s Youth

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Does your community care about children? This deceptively simple question carries profound moral, social, and civic weight. Across the United States, children are too often treated not as developing citizens deserving care and opportunity, but as problems to be managed. Systems meant to safeguard youth—juvenile justice, labor laws, immigration enforcement, and foster care—can instead respond with punishment, neglect, or harm. Children bear the consequences of policies and practices they did not create...