Saturday, June 15, 2019

FIRST IN HIS FAMILY TO EARN HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA … BUT IT WAS INSIDE A PRISON

As Newsom Rethinks Juvenile Justice, California Reconsiders Prison For Kids

LAPPL News Watch
June 14, 2019

As for most high school students, commencement day was big for Osvaldo Moreno. “This is a proud moment for me,” he beamed on a recent June weekend, and not just because he was the first to finish school among six—soon-to-be seven—children in his family.

Though it’s not on the parchment, Moreno, 21, earned his Johanna Boss High School diploma over the past two years at a state prison for juveniles in Stockton. And as one of fewer than 800 remaining youths in the custody of the soon-to-be-shuttered juvenile division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he said, that accomplishment—behind razor wire—was more than just a step toward a future job or a rite of passage.

“Being the first one [in the family] to graduate,” he said, “is like creating a sense of normalcy.”

That “normalcy” is what Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have in mind as they vote this week and in coming days on a plan to begin transitioning what’s left of the state-run youth detention system from the purview of adult corrections back to a more rehabilitative model.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Newsom’s plan for ‘kids’ should work out as well as Jerry Brown’s prison reform … more victims of crime.

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