by Tom Rose As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe that Wyoming should decriminalize status offenses. According to the most recent data available through both the FBI and the OJJDP, Wyoming ranks second-to-highest in the nation for both juvenile arrests and juvenile incarcerations. Wyoming is also the only state that has not decriminalized st...

by Tom Rose This week I attended two days of the Judiciary Interim Committee. There were several juvenile justice related topics on the agenda. During my attendance at these long and sometimes heated meetings a junior legislator asked out loud (in frustration) if anyone knew whether juvenile crime in Wyoming was actually decreasing. This legislator...

by Tom Rose If you have been following juvenile justice issues at all you may have come across the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation which has not decriminalized status offenses. You may even believe that you have an understanding of what that means. The concept is fairly simple: a status crime is an action that would not be a crime...

by Tom Rose For the last few weeks I have been writing about child wellness in Wyoming. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation Wyoming ranked 19th in the 2014 annual report which is a lower ranking than our performance of 15th according to the 2013 report. These rankings are determined according to sixteen measured wellness categories divided a...

by Tom Rose In this part of the Wyoming Wellness series we look a bit more closely at a few of the specific wellness indicators related to child and teen deaths and teens who are not in school and not employed. Our starting point for following these wellness metrics is the 2014 Child Wellness report published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids...

by Tom Rose Over the last few months I have been researching juvenile justice issues with a particular focus on how to keep kids out of jail. While writing about my findings I have explored the disturbing national phenomenon of extremely young kids being arrested. This research has also uncovered the troubling connection between police officers (SR...

by Tom Rose The Shame on U.S.report has recently recommended that Congress withhold all federal child welfare funds in order to compel states to comply with child welfare laws and standards that the authors say are being violated in every state. The Children's Advocacy Institute of the San Diego School of Law in conjunction with First Star, a non-p...

by Tom Rose As introduced in the first part of this series, the Shame on U.S. report, published in January 2015 has made some radical recommendations to address the national crisis of child welfare. If the Congressional committee to which it was presented follows the recommendations of this report, Wyoming may soon see a drastic decrease of federal...

by Tom Rose Wyoming's status as the only non-compliant state to the JJDPA (Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act) has recently come under scrutiny at a national level. In January 2015 the Children's Advocacy Institute presented a report entitled Shame on U.S.: Failings by All Three Branches of our Federal Government Leave Abused and Neglected...

by Tom Rose I recently wrote a blog entitled Keeping Kids Out of Jail which led into an entire series including the Troubling Trend of Elementary School Arrests and finally to the Wyoming School Safety Issues That Every Citizen Should Know series. This week we return to the consideration of what can be done preventatively to keep our children on-tr...