COVID-19 and California’s Detained Youth: Vulnerable and Overlooked

Recently, PJDC’s Policy Director Sue Burrell, along with her frequent collaborator, Shannan Wilber of the National Center of Lesbian Rights, responded to UC Berkeley California Journal of Politics and Policy’s call for articles for in its special issue on COVID-19. The resulting article, “COVID-19 and California’s Detained Youth: Vulnerable and Overlooked,” chronicles the efforts they and other California advocates undertook in response to the pandemic, as well as the challenges they encountered in trying to engage the relevant state agencies.
To provide context, the article describes the vulnerabilities of detained youth and the public health guidance to protect them during the current emergency. It documents how the relevant state agencies responded to their advocacy efforts and closes with a series of recommendations for improving emergency response systems for detained youth.
The authors hope that the article will serve (1) as a legislative agenda for how to fix emergency response policies in particular agencies or though legislation; (2) as a historical record of what happened, including enormous efforts by PJDC and sister organizations; and (3) as a citation supported source exposing yet another way our clients are not well cared for by public systems.
You can link to the article HERE.