by MOSES Publications | May 21, 2025 | JSRI Justice System Reform Initiatives, Juvenile Justice, Newsletter, RJAC Racial Justice for All Children
Submitted by Katie Mulligan
Youth arrests and incarceration increased in the closing decades of the 20th century but have fallen sharply since. Public opinion often lags behind these realities, wrongly assuming both that crime is perpetually increasing and that youth offending is routinely violent. In fact, youth offending is predominantly nonviolent, and the 21st century has seen significant declines in youth arrests and incarceration.
Between 2000 and 2022, the number of youth held in juvenile justice facilities fell from 108,000 to 27,600: a 75% decline. But despite positive movement on important indicators, far too many youth – disproportionately youth of color – are still incarcerated.
by Sherry Reames | Mar 17, 2025 | Juvenile Justice, Newsletter, Prisons, Racial Equity, Reviews
Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Random House, 2011
Review by Sherry Reames
Wes Moore was not yet governor of Maryland when he wrote this book, but his career was clearly full of promise. In the decade since his college graduation, he had won a Rhodes Scholarship for further study at Oxford, served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, been chosen as a White House Fellow, and even given one of the speeches at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. As he explains in his introduction, the book originated when he learned about another young Black man named Wes Moore, approximately the same age and from a similar neighborhood, who was awaiting trial for murder. Struck by the coincidences, the author started corresponding with “the other Wes” and got his permission to interview people who knew him well and tell their stories side by side. The book begins with this powerful passage:
“This is the story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free and has experienced things that he never even knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and father of five dead. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. Our stories are obviously specific to our two lives, but I hope they will illuminate the crucial inflection points where our paths diverge and our fates are sealed. It’s unsettling to know how little separates each of us from another life altogether” (p. xi).
As this introduction suggests, the narrative focuses on “inflection points,” with each chapter juxtaposing the experiences of the author (“I”) with those of “Wes” during the most formative years of their young lives. In many ways they start from the same position: fatherless almost from the start (though for very different reasons), being raised by a hard-working single mother who does her best to keep them in school and safe from bad influences in their neighborhoods. But it was the 1980s, and the streets were full of young drug dealers who flaunted their expensive shoes and fine clothes, presenting a huge temptation to kids who desperately wanted to look cool and fit in. Even before their teens, both Wes Moores start getting into trouble – skipping school much of the time, failing their classes, getting into fights, already being picked up by the police. Both mothers make desperate efforts to get them back on the right path, but that proves to be harder than they imagine.
If my summary of the similarities makes these kids’ life stories sound overly predictable, trust me – they’re not! Both narratives are complex, richly detailed, and absorbing. I found myself rooting for the mothers and other relatives who intervened, trying to save these kids, and grieved when the kids made more and more bad choices. I won’t spoil the suspense by explaining what finally saved the successful Wes Moore, except to say that it took a lot more people than his mother to turn him around and start unleashing his potential. Here’s how he puts it in the Epilogue:
“What changed was that I found myself surrounded by people – starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and leading to a string of wonderful role models and mentors – who kept pushing me to see more than was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself. People who taught me that no accident of birth – not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless – would ever define or limit me. In other words, they helped me to discover what it means to be free” (pp. 179-80).
The trajectory of the other Wes continued to spiral tragically downward, spurred partly by the fact that he left school too early and never found better role models and mentors. But of course it’s not that simple. In a final reflection on his book, added a year after its first publication, the author reflects that he hopes these two stories will encourage other youngsters to think seriously about taking control of their own destinies and will also encourage parents and mentors who are trying to raise kids in hostile environments.
The book was a New York Times best-seller when it came out, and it is still relevant to the needs of today. In an effort to make it even more useful, the paperback edition includes an extensive resource guide, identifying organizations across the country that are working to help young people discover their potential, and discussion questions suitable for classrooms or book groups. If your church or neighborhood is looking for a readable, enlightening book on race, poverty, and juvenile crime in the U.S., this would be a perfect choice.
by MOSES Publications | Mar 1, 2024 | Advocacy, Juvenile Justice, Newsletter, Prisons, WISDOM
End Life Sentences for Juveniles By Margaret Irwin
The State of Wisconsin is inching its way toward passing a bill that would end life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles. Current law allows a judge to sentence offenders between 13 and 17 to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or community supervision, no matter how many decades they will serve.
In December 2023, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 801/Assembly Bill 845. It states that when the court sentences a youthful offender to life imprisonment, it must set a date on which the person will become eligible to be considered for release on parole or community supervision. Normally, this would be after 15-20 years in prison. Passing this bill would not guarantee release, but it creates a mechanism to apply for early release. It would also apply retroactively, opening the possibility of release to several dozen current prisoners who received extreme sentences during their teens.
Passage of SB801/AB845 would bring Wisconsin in line with 28 states that have already banned Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences, including Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The U.S. is the only country in the world that allows such sentences. The bill would also bring Wisconsin law into accord with the U.S. Constitution. In Miller vs. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that imposing a mandatory life sentence without parole on a juvenile constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
The movement to ban life sentences for juveniles is also based on a growing body of scientific evidence that the brain continues to develop into a person’s mid-20s. Younger people may exhibit immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences. As state Sen. Jesse James, co-author of SB 801 asks, “How is a 15-year-old supposed to understand life without parole when that sentence is literally quadruple the entire time they’ve been alive? People can grow; people can change, especially when their brains are still forming. Juveniles deserve a second chance.”
A report from The Sentencing Project concludes: “The evolving maturing of young adults leads to a sharp decline in criminal tendencies by the late 30s; and therefore, incarceration beyond a period of 15-20 years, even for serious crimes, produces diminishing returns for public safety. The National Research Council is the latest authority to note that long-term sentences serve little purpose other than to reinforce [retribution rather than rehabilitation].”
Similar bills have been introduced in the state Legislature in the past, but they never made it out of committee. Now there is some progress. The Assembly Committee on Judiciary held a hearing on the bill on Feb. 8. James Morgan and Sherry Reames from MOSES and Mark Rice from WISDOM testified in favor of the bill, and many MOSES members contacted their legislators to express their support. Since the legislative session is set to end on March 14, the bill may not pass during this session. However, the gears have been set in motion. As we know in MOSES, progress can be slow, so it’s important to keep our collective foot on the pedal.
by Pamela Oliver | Nov 8, 2023 | JSRI Justice System Reform Initiatives, Juvenile Justice, RJAC Racial Justice for All Children, Schools
Restorative Justice in Madison Schools
By Barbie Jackson
The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), like many other districts, is striving to provide the best possible responses to behavioral challenges in the schools. One method is Restorative Justice, which is emerging as a way to create inclusive environments where all children can thrive and where all are called to respond to harm by restoring wholeness to all involved.
Kat Nichols, MMSD’s restorative justice program manager, expresses it as follows:
Harming others is part of being human, and having the opportunity to say sorry, actively being in the healing process, is how we achieve communities of care, respect, and love where all kids thrive. These are the environments where children and adults can experience the safety and security they are striving for in their schools. Punitive approaches don’t correct the behavior. They just don’t work.
Restorative justice values all our precious children. It responds to harm by avoiding the impulse to punish and suspend, which causes more harm and fails to achieve correct behavior. Rather, restorative justice brings people back into supportive and inclusive relationships and promotes healing.
In MOSES, our Racial Justice for All Children task force (RJAC) is partnering with MMSD to support a robust implementation of restorative justice in the schools. This is one of several RJAC undertakings to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.
After the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Madison’s Board of Education voted unanimously to eliminate School Resource Officers (SROs) – police officers under contract from the Madison Police Department – from Madison’s four high schools: East, West, Memorial, and La Follette. The board appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on Safety and Security to study and recommend a new approach in the high schools, which recommended a broad implementation of restorative justice. MOSES fully supported the recommendations and advocated MMSD budget support for four restorative justice coaches in the four high schools. That budget was approved, and the positions were established.
The transition from SROs to restorative justice was to begin in the 2020-’21 school year, but students were not in the buildings most of that year and thus this implementation was disrupted. And the 2021-’22 school year was rough; many students were significantly dysregulated due to the pandemic and isolation from their usual school and social environments. It was only in the last school year that the environment was conducive to rolling this project out and all restorative justice coordinator positions were filled.
In 2023, RJAC members decided to learn more about its current state of implementation and began collaborating with the providers. We met with Ericka Brown, a former restorative justice coordinator at East, to learn about her perspective and experience. We met with Rev. David Hart, special assistant to the superintendent, and Kat Nichols, who has been working with the district over the past academic year and is a dedicated and passionate supporter of restorative justice in the schools. After these two meetings, we formed a small team to continue our engagement, learning, and advocacy: Shel Gross, Peggy Larson, Nakia Wiley, and Barbie Jackson.
This team met again with Kat to discuss the current status in the high schools, as well as implementation of restorative justice in the elementary and middle schools. Kat supported connections between some of our team members and the restorative justice coaches at East and Memorial high schools and will provide further connections to senior administrators responsible for it. In October, Robin Lowney Lankton, a member of Families for Justice and Madison Friends Meeting, arranged for Kat and her colleague Lonna Stoltzfus to visit a Friends meeting to talk about restorative justice and to facilitate a restorative justice circle experience for participants. Shel and Barbie were among the attendees and recommend this powerful experience as something MOSES could consider for a future general meeting.
MMSD faces some challenges in continuing its rollout of restorative justice. Although there is a full-time restorative justice coordinator position at each high school, the person at West is on leave, so that position is not currently operational. Additional challenges include lack of staff time for training, insufficient funds to expand support, and multiple demands on scant financial and staff resources. Implementation of restorative justice is really a multiyear process, as it involves changing the culture of schools. It also involves individual teachers learning how to effectively use restorative conversations with their students and create community-building circles in their classrooms. Restorative justice will be more effective in a school that is also implementing trauma-informed care and social-emotional learning practices.This requires an extended focus on these issues – something MMSD has not always been able to do well, given the multiple, often conflicting demands that schools face.
Our restorative justice team intends to continue its discussions with school administrators, Board of Education members, and community partners with a historical perspective on the challenges of fully implementing restorative justice in the schools. Part of this includes making sure the community in general and parents in particular are aware of what MMSD is attempting to do and rallying support for it. We are hopeful that our engagement will help identify specific points where we can advocate steady support and growth of this important way of providing a welcoming, inclusive environment for all students and a disruption of exclusionary practices, such as suspensions and expulsions, which seriously contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.
by MOSES Publications | Oct 8, 2023 | Advocacy, Juvenile Justice, Prisons
Can Wisconsin Finally End Juvenile Life Without Parole?
By Sherry Reames
The Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice (WAY-J) is making another push to end life- without-parole sentences for offenders under the age of 18. Family members and other advocates of juvenile lifers gathered in the Capitol on Oct. 26 to hear a panel that included both victims and former perpetrators of youth violence, and then visited legislative offices with their own stories and some excellent fact sheets on this issue from the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
Across the country, juvenile life without parole has already been banned by 26 other states, including such conservative bastions as Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, both Dakotas, and Iowa. Wisconsin lawmakers from both parties supported a promising bill on this issue in the 2021-22 session, and it came close to passing. Although the details of this year’s bill are still being worked out, bipartisan sponsors have been found and supporters are optimistic. Stay tuned for further developments in this important campaign, which may affect juvenile offenders currently serving long sentences, as well as future cases.
