DA Boudin and Rachel are joined by Zach Norris, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the author of Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons and Punishment, to talk about all of the ways the legal system impacts kids.  They discuss the criminalization of kids of color; the impacts of juvenile incarceration; and the differences between the juvenile and adult systems—as well as how it all affects kids and their families.  Zach also discusses the ways in which prosecutors can effect change for kids in the system.

For more information:

• Link to purchase Zach Norris’s book, Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment
• Website for Ella Baker Center
• KQED interview with Zach on “Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities”
• Forbes article on Zach’s book
• San Francisco Chronicle A-and-S-F-have-it-right-No-children-should-15827850.php"> op-ed, “LA and SF Have It Right: No Children Should be Prosecuted as Adults”
• Research from Harvard about juvenile justice and the adolescent brain
• Justice Policy Report showing recidivism rates are higher for kids prosecuted as adults in the legal system
• CJCJ 2019 report on the violence and neglect in California’s Division of Juvenile Justice
• San Francisco Chronicle proposes-closing-youth-prisons-as-crime-15292274.php"> article on Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to close the Division of Juvenile Justice
• Op-ed in the Sacramento Bee on the closure of DJJ and how it should have happened long before COVID