As of October 1, 2012, Catawba County EMS has been named a Permanent Car Seat Checking Station by Buckle Up NC. Car seat checks will be conducted Monday thru Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., by appointment, at the Newton EMS base, located at 1101 South Brady Ave, Newton, NC 28658.

2012 Catawba County Employee Of The Year, Ona Scruggs, recognized for patience, understanding, listening in stressful arena.

A new agreement extends borrowing privileges at Lenoir-Rhyne University Library to registered users of Hickory Public and Catawba County Libraries.

Catawba County Assistant Planning Director, Mary George, has been named 2012 Outstanding Contributor to Agriculture by the Hickory Kiwanis Club

The information was developed and compiled by the Children's Agenda Planning Committee, appointed by the Catawba County Board of Commissioners. The committee's vision is to ensure a safe community where all children are engaged, enriched and equipped to reach their full potential.

The Catawba County Library System has received two awards from the North Carolina Public Library Directors� Association. Library Director Karen Foss was on hand to accept honors for the new Conover Branch facility and Battle of the Books programming presented at the NCPLDA annual awards banquet December 6 in Winston-Salem.

Catawba County has launched a performance dashboard, a program that will be the gateway for hundreds of pieces of data on dozens of topics related to the County government, demographics and quality of life. Catawba County Facts and Figures, offers users a choice of exploring data grouped into eight broad categories.

Architectural plans have been finalized for the new Sherrills Ford branch of Catawba County Library. The 10,000 square foot facility, to be erected on 2.5 acres near the intersection of Highway 150 and Sherrills Ford Road, is expected to be completed in 2014.

Suzanne M. White, who has managed comprehensive library programs, services and personnel at two full service library branches in Rowan County for more than seven years, and has had a successful career in library services spanning more than twenty years, has been named Catawba County�s new Library Director. White succeeds Karen Foss, who will retire on February 1, 2013, after serving as the County�s Library Director since July 1999.

Chinese maker of products for the textile industry has located its first US manufacturing facility in Conover, creating 78 new jobs.

Catawba County Director of Utilities and Engineering Barry Edwards has been named one of the winners of the 2013 Energy Leadership Awards by the Business Journal of Charlotte.

The Catawba County Board of Commissioners took action at its meeting on February 4, 2013, to dedicate the entrance area of the Catawba County Justice Center in honor of retired Sheriff L. David Huffman and his 32 years of services to the county, including four as a county commissioner and 28 as Sheriff.

Lori A. Mathes was appointed by the Catawba County Board of Commissioners as the County�s new Tax Collector, based upon staff�s recommendation, at the Board�s meeting on February 18, 2013. Mathes served as Chief Financial Officer for Mental Health Partners of Hickory for eight years, responsible for overseeing the agency�s expenditures and revenues, its accounting policies and procedures.

Catawba County Public Health, in partnership with its Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program and Catawba County Health Partners� Eat Smart Move More Catawba County coalition, is launching a farmers market May 2. The market will be held in Public Health�s parking lot Thursdays from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and is open to the public.

Catawba County will mail data verification, income and expense request, to property owners as 2015 revluation process continues on May 17, 2013. Owners are requested to verify the information found on the data verification sheet, provide pertinent additional information and make any necessary corrections, and return the form to the revaluation office. http://www.catawbacountync.gov/events/revalmailer13.asp

The Western Piedmont Council of Governments has won a national honor for the Western North Carolina Annual Air Quality Conference held at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Catawba County Home Health is empowering older adults to lower their risk of falling through a new service called Smart Moves.

"Catawba County Facts and Figures" web page, the gateway for hundreds of pieces of data on dozens of topics related to the County government, demographics and quality of life, has been named winner of a 2013 National Association of Counties (NACo) Achievement Award.

Catawba County Public Health's annual report, emergency preparedness outreach have won national honors from the National Association of County Information Officers.

County employees in the first Leadership Academy recently helped families in transition through a Family Care Center project.

Catawba County has been ranked #1 nationally in its population group in the 2013 Digital Counties Survey by Gov Tech Magazine.

Catawba County requests State assistance for those with damage from July 27 flooding.

Adult Services Social Worker Chandra Henson with Catawba County Social Services has been honored by the North Carolina Adult Foster Care Association.

Many Catawba County residents will be able to recycle more items beginning November 4.

Annual Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2012-2013 shows Catawba County improved its financial position with conservative approach.

Randy Cress, currently the Systems and Network Manager for Rowan County, North Carolina, is named Catawba County's new Chief Information Officer.

Catawba County Public Health has earned reaccreditation from the North Carolina Local Health Department Accreditation Board.

Social Services program honored as one of only 15 programs in U.S. making critical difference in lives of youth in foster care.

Charter Communications' Government Channel for Catawba County will move from Channel 3 to Channel 192 effective January 28, 2014.

Dental care was recently provided for hundreds of children by Catawba County Public Health.

Catawba County Board of Commissioners adopts resolution supporting citizen participation in government through elections in Catawba County.

Catawba County Board of Elections appoints Amanda Duncan as new Director of Elections to succeed retiring Larry Brewer.

A hazing-related student death at Bowling Green State University has renewed conversations about hazing on college campuses.; Credit: Adam Lacy/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

There were zero reported deaths from college hazing incidents in 2020, but as campuses reopen to students, there have already been two hazing-related deaths this year. Eight men face a range of charges, including involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, evidence tampering and failure to comply with underage alcohol laws, after Stone Foltz, a sophomore at Bowling Green State University, died on March 7 of alcohol poisoning.

At a news conference on April 29, Wood County Prosecutor Paul Dobson described the fraternity event in which initiates were told to drink 750 milliliters of hard alcohol — or about 40 shots, according to Hank Nuwer, author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives. Dobson said Foltz's death was "the result of a fatal level of alcohol intoxication during a hazing incident."

Experts like Nuwer are concerned that as students return to in-person learning and are eager to take part in "the college experience," more hazing-related deaths may be on the way.

"There seems to be a disconnect — not seeing that alcohol-related hazing can kill," he says.

Nuwer is a professor emeritus of journalism at Franklin College and the author of five books on hazing. He spoke with NPR's All Things Considered about how the Stone Foltz case could reshape hazing prosecution, how college campuses create a "perfect storm" for hazing and how to put an end to the practice, once and for all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

On the legal history of prosecuting hazing

There've been charges all along, but often they get dropped or they're unsuccessful. I would consider this to be a landmark case because of the possibility of at least five years of imprisonment, if the prosecutor is successful.

We have 44 state laws out there on hazing, but some are very, very weak. And Ohio's is weak now, but they're trying to strengthen it after a death at Ohio University [in 2018] and now Bowling Green.

On what the return to college campuses means for hazing

What I'm seeing is, in effect, we have two freshmen classes in that the sophomores have been taking online classes. Now they're going to be out there, and they haven't had any hazing or alcohol education programs. They're coming out there with a gusto because now they're the people of status, who have power over these pledges. And then the regular freshman class is coming in, all excited as usual, and we've seen so many times where a death occurs within the first couple of days of the students on campus, sometimes before they've taken a single class.

On the challenges to end fraternity hazing

In my opinion, campuses are the perfect storm for something like this because we're all about status and power. All of these obstacles have led to today, when alcohol has been added to the mix. There wasn't a single alcohol death before 1940. Now, it's one of the most major [causes of hazing-related deaths]. There were 62 deaths from 2009 to 2021; 39 were alcohol related.

On whether this is a chance for colleges to reset this part of campus culture

I want a hard approach. You have to go after the alumni who are encouraging this. You have to punish all of the hazing — not temporarily. This tradition has to stop, and it can't be looked at as tradition. As Mr. [Paul] Dobson, the prosecutor, is doing in the Stone Foltz case: You have to prosecute to the fullest extent [of the law].

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren holds a news conference in March. She and Sen. Bernie Sanders are leading the push to introduce a bill Tuesday that would make pandemic-related food benefits for college students permanent, and create grants for colleges to address hunger.; Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Democrats in the House and Senate are introducing legislation Tuesday that would make pandemic-related food benefits for college students permanent. The push is being led by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent,

In the December relief package, Congress increased the number of low-income college students eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP) benefits for the duration of the pandemic. That included students who are eligible for work study, have an Expected Family Contribution of zero dollars, or qualify for a maximum Pell Grant on their federal financial aid form. According to The Century Foundation, this expansion affects about 3 million college students.

The legislation proposed Tuesday would make these changes permanent, including requiring the U.S. Education Department to notify students they may be eligible for SNAP when they fill out their student aid applications. The bill would also require the Department to collect data on hunger and food insecurity, and would create a $1 billion-a-year grant program for institutions to address hunger on campus.

"Far too many college students struggle to meet their basic needs while they get their education and the pandemic has made this problem even worse," Warren said in a statement to NPR. "As students take on a mountain of student loan debt, they shouldn't have to choose between paying tuition and eating."

The push comes amid new research that shows 39% of two-year college students are facing food insecurity; for students at 4-year schools the number affected is 29%, according to Temple University's Hope Center for College, Community and Justice.

Before the pandemic, in 2019, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on humger among college students, concluding that over a third of students don't always have enough to eat, and that federal systems already in place, including SNAP, could do a better job of helping them.

Many colleges have increased food benefits for their students, creating or expanding emergency grants, food pantries and other forms of assistance. State legislatures in several places including Virginia and Massachusetts have also moved to address issues of hunger on campus.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /The Washington Post via Getty Images

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According to the National Institute For Early Childhood Research, nearly half of all three-year-olds and a third of all four-year-olds in the United States were not enrolled in preschool in 2019. That's in large part because many parents can't afford it. Imagine a future where we changed that. A future where every American child had access to two years of preschool during a critical period of their mental development. How would their lives change? How would society change? If President Biden gets his way, and Congress agrees to spend $200 billion on his proposal for universal preschool, then we may begin to find out.

But it turns out, we kind of already know. In fact, a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research gives us a glimpse of what that world could look like. It adds to a burgeoning amount of high-quality research that shows just how valuable preschool is — and maybe not for the reasons you might think.

An Accidental Experiment

The story begins back in the mid-to-late 1990s. The Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, wanted to improve the city's schools. One of his big goals was to provide universal, full-day kindergarten for Boston's kids. But the budget was tight, and following a task force's recommendations, he and local lawmakers decided to move resources from preschool (for four-year-olds) to kindergarten (for five-year-olds) in order to achieve it.

The result was an even more limited number of slots for city-funded preschool, and the city officials had to figure out how to fairly divvy up those slots. They resorted to a lottery system, randomly selecting kids who would get in.

Fast forward two decades later, and the economists Christopher R. Walters, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, and Parag A. Pathak saw this as a golden opportunity to see how preschool can affect people's lives. The fact that Boston's school administrators randomized who got admitted meant there were two virtually identical groups of kids with only one difference: one group got an extra year of education by going to preschool. That gave the researchers the opportunity to compare and contrast the two groups of kids and credibly see how kids' lives changed as a result of getting into preschool.

Four thousand four-year-olds took part in Boston's preschool lottery between 1997 and 2003. Walters, Gray-Lobe, and Pathak acquired data on them from the Boston school system. And then they were able to get additional data from other sources that gave them insight into ways that the childrens' lives might have benefited from an additional year of preschool education. These kids are now all twentysomethings — a fact that should make you feel old.

Consistent with other studies that find preschool has a huge effect on kids, Walters, Gray-Lobe, and Pathak find that the kids lucky enough to get accepted into preschools in Boston saw meaningful changes to their lives. These kids were less likely to get suspended from school, less likely to skip class, and less likely to get in trouble and be placed in a juvenile detention facility. They were more likely to take the SATs and prepare for college.

The most eye-popping effects the researchers find are on high school graduation and college enrollment rates. The kids who got accepted into preschool ended up having a high-school graduation rate of 70% — six percentage points higher than the kids who were denied preschool, who saw a graduation rate of only 64%. And 54% of the preschoolers ended up going to college after they graduated — eight percentage points higher than their counterparts who didn't go to preschool. These effects were bigger for boys than for girls. And they're all the more remarkable because the researchers only looked at the effects of a single year of preschool, as opposed to two years of preschool (as President Biden is now proposing for the nation's youth). Moreover, in many cases, the classes were only half-day.

Intriguingly, while attending preschool at age four had clear effects on these kids' entire lives, it did not improve their performance on standardized tests. These findings fit into a large body of research that suggests the true value of preschool is helping little ones to develop "non-cognitive skills," like emotional and social intelligence, grit, and respect for the rules.

"The combination of findings — that we don't see an impact on test scores, but we do see an impact on these behavioral outcomes and the likelihood of attending college — is consistent with this idea that there's some kind of behavioral or socio-emotional, non-cognitive impact from preschool," says Christopher Walters, an economist at UC Berkeley who co-authored the study.

In other words, there's growing evidence that preschool can permanently improve kids lives — but it's not necessarily because it makes them smarter. It seems more related to making them more disciplined and motivated, which is just as important (or perhaps even more important) for their future livelihoods as how well they perform on reading or math tests.

The Bigger Picture

This latest study isn't the first to show the outsized effects of providing a preschool education. The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has spent many years studying the results of small, randomized experiments with preschool in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous such experiment was The Perry Preschool Project, which was conducted in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The program provided two years of high-quality preschool for disadvantaged three- and four-year-olds.

Heckman and his colleagues found that the Perry Preschool had seismic effects on the kids who participated. They were much less likely to get arrested, go on welfare, or be unemployed as adults. They earned significantly more. In a recent study, Heckman and his team found that even the kids of the kids who went to the Perry preschool had significantly better outcomes in life.

All in all, Heckman and his team estimate that every dollar the Perry Preschool project invested in kids had a return on investment of 7-10 percent per year, through increased economic gains for the kids and decreased public spending on them through other social programs when they got older. That's a substantial return, equal to or greater than the average annual return from the stock market, and much greater than most other things our government spends money on.

Other preschool programs studied by Heckman and his colleagues have had even greater benefits. In the 1970s, a couple of programs in North Carolina experimented with high-quality childcare centers for kids. The centers offered kids aged zero to five education, medical checkups, and nutritious food. Heckman and his team found these centers delivered a 13 percent annual return on investment to the public for every dollar they invested. The program helped Heckman develop what's known as "the Heckman Curve," which asserts that the government gets more bang for the buck the earlier it provides resources to educate people. Educating toddlers, Heckman says, is much more powerful than educating high-schoolers, college students, or adults in, for example, job-training programs.

As astounding as Heckman's findings about preschool have been, naysayers have long questioned whether such effects could be replicated with larger scale programs, like the one President Biden is now proposing. This new study out of Boston, which looks at a large-scale program conducted across the entire city, is another brick in the growing edifice of evidence that shows preschool is a worthy investment, not just for kids, but for society overall.

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This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A demonstrator holds a sign in support of the Affordable Care Act in front of the U.S. Supreme Court last November. On Thursday, the justices did just that.; Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act for the third time on Thursday, leaving in place the broad provisions of the law enacted by Congress in 201o. The vote was 7 to 2.

The opinion was authored by Justice Stephen Breyer who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The decision threw out the challenge to the law on the grounds that Texas and other objecting GOP-dominated states were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision and thus had no standing to bring the challenge to court.

"To have standing, a plaintiff must 'allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief,' " the majority wrote. "No plaintiff has shown such an injury 'fairly traceable' to the 'allegedly unlawful conduct' challenged here."

The mandate, the most controversial provision of the law, required that people either buy health insurance or pay a penalty. In 2012, it was upheld by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the decisive fifth vote, on the grounds that the penalty fell within the taxing power of Congress.

In 2017, Congress got rid of the penalty after the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the law would continue to function effectively without it. That prompted the challengers to go back to court, contending that because the penalty had been zeroed out, it was no longer a tax or a mandate. What's more, they contended, because the mandate was so interwoven with the rest of the ACA, the whole law must be struck down.

Over 31 million Americans have access health insurance through the ACA — a record high since the law's inception, the White House said last week. In addition, the Urban Institute reported in May that ACA premiums have gone down each of the last three years.

Many of the provisions of the ACA are now taken for granted. Up to 135 million people are covered by the ban on discrimination against those with preexisting conditions.

Young adults are now permitted to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26; copays are not permitted for preventive care; and insurance companies can no longer put lifetime caps on benefits, are required to spend 80% of premiums on medical coverage and are barred from discrimination based on factors like gender.

In addition, Medicaid coverage was greatly expanded after all but a dozen states took advantage of the ACA to expand federally subsidized coverage under the program. Among those who have benefited are many who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs in the COVID-19 pandemic.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police tape blocks access from a street leading to the building complex where the Capital Gazette is located on June 29, 2018, in Annapolis, Md. The suspect barricaded a back door in an effort to "kill as many people as he could kill," police said.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Jury selection in the trial of the gunman who fatally shot five employees at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., on June 28, 2018 gets underway on Wednesday.

Jarrod Ramos, 41, has pleaded guilty — but not criminally responsible for reason of insanity — in the killings of John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in modern U.S. history.

"There is a sense that you don't want this to be the thing that makes your life change," Phil Davis, the paper's former criminal justice reporter who now works at the Baltimore Sun, told NPR.

Davis was hiding under his desk while live tweeting the shooting that day. Later, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that put out a paper the very next day.

"That's kind of what drove me to continue as a criminal justice reporter. Once I got the feeling of like, 'no we're going to get back to exactly what we do. We're going to tackle this how we would even if it wasn't us and try to go at it from the perspective of a local community newspaper,'" Davis said.

Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Columbia University's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, said what made this shooting reverberate in newsrooms across the U.S. was "the idea of a newsroom full of colleagues being murdered just because they are journalists. It's an identity based attack."

Attacks on journalists in the U.S. haven't stopped there. During his time in office, President Donald Trump tweeted that the news media is the enemy of the people. Associated Press journalists were threatened and had their equipment damaged by supporters of Trump during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. And last year, during the protests in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd by police, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported at least 160 threats to journalists across the country in one week--mostly by police.

Shapiro says the trial is a reminder to the public of the risks and costs local reporters take daily.

"The reality is that local newsrooms all over the country cover extraordinarily difficult events affecting their own families, neighbors, kids, schools whether that is wildfires, whether that is mass shooting, whether that is COVID-19," Shapiro said.

The Capital Gazette trial has been delayed several times due to COVID-19, turnover in the public defender and state's attorney's offices, and rounds of court hearings. Davis says he hopes the long-awaited trial brings some closure.

"Certainly for the families of the victims themselves, I look forward to being on the other end of this trial," he said. "And whatever the outcome is, being able to embrace them and support them just to bring them some sort of closure."

Today, less than a week before the third anniversary of the shooting, the judge has called a pool of 300 people to determine the 12 that will sit as jurors. They will then determine Ramos's mental sanity during the attack.

Steve Mercer, a former Maryland public defender, said the defense has the burden to prove Ramos's sanity. He said that in cases like these, the defense will look at motive and intent. One possible motive, Mercer says, is Ramos' "long-simmering feud with the paper."

Ramos sued the paper for defamation in 2012 after reporters wrote about his guilty plea on charges of criminal harassment and 90-day suspended jail sentence. But that motive might not hold up.

"I think there's a big gap between sort of being upset about a story that's published ... and then going in and committing a mass shooting," Mercer said.

Mercer adds what presents a challenge to both the defense and prosecution is Ramos's conduct after the shooting. He was found by police under a desk at the scene of the shooting with a pump-action shotgun which was purchased legally a few years before.

"The defense may point to it and say that it shows just a disconnect from reality and a lack of awareness of what was going on," Mercer said.

Circuit Court Judge Judge Michael Wachs will ultimately decide if he ends up in prison or a state psychiatric hospital.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Federal prosecutors secured their first guilty plea Wednesday in the Justice Department's sprawling conspiracy case involving the Oath Keepers extremist group in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

At a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., Graydon Young pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of obstruction of an official proceeding. The 55-year-old Florida resident agreed to cooperate with investigators, which could prove critical as the government pursues the remaining defendants in the high-profile case.

Young is one of 16 people associated with the Oath Keepers to be charged with conspiracy, obstruction and other offenses over the Capitol riot. Prosecutors say the defendants coordinated their efforts and actions to try to disrupt Congress' certification of the Electoral College count on Jan. 6.

More than 500 people have been charged so far in connection with the Capitol breach, but the Oath Keepers conspiracy case is one of the most closely watched because of the allegations and the link to an extremist organization.

Young is the second defendant linked to the Oath Keepers to plead guilty. Jon Schaffer pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding and entering restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon in April.

According to Young's statement of offense, he coordinated with his co-conspirators ahead of Jan. 6 and used encrypted messaging apps to maintain "operational security."

On the day itself, the document says, Young and some of his co-conspirators pushed through U.S. Capitol Police lines guarding the Capitol and into the building.

"Mr. Young believed that he and the co-conspirators were trying to obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, that is, a proceeding before Congress, specifically, Congress's certification of the Electoral College vote," the document says.

At Wednesday's hearing, Judge Amit Mehta read that passage to Young to ensure that it was accurate.

"Yes, sir," Young replied, "that is correct."

According to the plea deal, Young has agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors, including sitting for interviews with investigators and testifying before the grand jury and at trial.

The government, meanwhile, has agreed to dismiss the remaining charges against him. Even so, Mehta said Young is facing a possible prison sentence of 5 to 6 1/2 years under the sentencing guidelines.

Wednesday brought another significant development in the Capitol investigation.

Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old from Indiana who described Jan. 6 as the "best day ever," became the first Capitol riot defendant to be sentenced.

Morgan-Lloyd was not accused of taking part in any of the violence at the Capitol. She pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of "parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building."

Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced her to three years of probation and no jail time.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, pictured in 2019, is hoping to change how the justice system handles cases involving 16- and 17-year-olds who are charged as adults.; Credit: Claire Harbage/NPR

A new proposal from D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine could overhaul the way juveniles are charged as adults and offer greater opportunities for rehabilitation than a federal prison.

If passed, the proposal would impact people like Charlie Curtis, who was charged with armed robbery and sent to adult court at the age of 16 — a decision that he said left him confused and adrift.

Curtis said he had problems reading and writing back then, let alone asking the court to appoint him a lawyer. After his conviction, he spent years in a federal prison in New Jersey.

"It's a little bit of everything," Curtis said. "A little scary, a little nervous, you got to grow up real fast. You're not in the high school gym no more."

Curtis returned home when he was 22. It would be a while before he stabilized, got a good job driving a truck and started a family that grew to include three children. He now volunteers to help other young people leaving jail and prison — trying to offer the support he got too late.

What the legislation would change

NPR has learned Racine will introduce legislation in the D.C. Council Wednesday to ensure that 16- and 17-year-olds accused of certain crimes start in the family court system.

"Children should be treated like children, including 16- and 17-year-olds, notwithstanding the seriousness of their alleged offense," Racine said.

The proposed legislation would apply to teens charged with murder, first-degree sexual abuse, and armed robbery, among other crimes. Currently, the lead federal prosecutor in D.C. can file those kinds of cases directly in adult court — without any say from a judge — even if those defendants ultimately plead guilty to lesser charges.

D.C. has no federal prisons of its own, so young people convicted as adults can spend years in other states, at great distances from their families. The D.C. attorney general said the majority of underaged defendants charged as adults return home to the District before they are 21, but without the benefit of access to educational programs, vocational training and mentoring they could have received if their cases had been handled in the family courts.

"The adult system doesn't work that way," Racine said. "Federal Bureau of Prisons people will tell you the adult system is not made for kids."

Eduardo Ferrer, the policy director at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative, said research demonstrates charging young people in the adult system decreases public safety by making it more likely they'll break the law in the future. Most charging decisions in these cases in D.C. are made within a half a day, without the benefit of a longer review of the facts of the case and the background of the teenager, he said.

"The process in D.C. right now, because the U.S. Attorney's Office does not exercise discretion often in terms of keeping kids down in juvenile court, is more of a sledgehammer," Ferrer said. "What we really need is a scalpel."

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington and the Metropolitan Police Department did not return calls for comment about the proposal. But its supporters expect some resistance when it's ultimately considered by the City Council.

Ferrer pointed out that the legislation still leaves room for a judge to transfer a young person in D.C. into adult court if the judge has concerns about the ability for rehabilitation and worries about public safety. "The reality is that a young person still can be transferred to adult court," he said. "The difference is we're taking the time to get it right."

The potential impact

The vast majority — 93% — of the 16- and 17-year-olds who are charged as adults in D.C. are Black. One of them is the son of Keela Hailes. In 2008, he was charged with armed robbery. Hailes said she wasn't consulted about decisions about what was best for her son.

"It's like my son went from a 16-year-old to a 30-year-old overnight," Hailes said.

Her son was convicted and sent to federal prison in North Dakota, too far for her to visit regularly as she had done in the D.C. area. Her son, now 30 years old, is incarcerated again. Hailes said she wishes he would have had more options years ago — a chance for an education, and time spent in a juvenile facility instead of around adults in prison.

She said science suggests young people have less judgment and maturity because their brains are still developing. She thinks the new proposal will make a "huge difference" for juveniles in the legal system in the District.

The proposal is the latest in a series of steps Racine has taken to overhaul juvenile justice in D.C. He pushed the courts to stop shackling young defendants; started a restorative justice program for juveniles to meet with and make amends to victims; and worked to limit the ability of police to put handcuffs on most people under age 12.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

After issuing its final decisions of the term Thursday, the Supreme Court on Friday granted a religious liberty case for next term and turned away challenges to longstanding decisions on qualified immunity and defamation, prompting dissents from the court's conservatives.

Court agrees to hear one religious liberty case, but rejects another

The justices agreed to consider a constitutional challenge to a school funding program in Maine that excludes private schools that teach religion.

Only half the school districts in Maine run their own high schools. The rest pay for students to attend public schools in other districts or to attend private schools. The state, however, will not fund students who attend any school that offers religious teaching.

Parents who wanted to send their children to a private Christian school challenged the law, alleging it violated their right to exercise their religion freely. The First Circuit disagreed, but now the high court will hear their case.

The justices, however, declined to hear another case about religious liberty – this one brought by a Washington state florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. She alleged that the state's antidiscrimination law violated her First Amendment rights, and in 2017, Washington's supreme court ruled against her.

Though the justices on Friday declined to hear her appeal, three of the court's conservatives—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch—would have taken it for next term.

Thomas calls to do away with qualified immunity

Also on Friday, Justice Thomas once again called for the court to do away with qualified immunity, the legal shield for police officers that has come under intense scrutiny in the last year of racial justice protests.

Thomas was dissenting from the court's refusal to hear the case of a college student promoting Turning Point USA, a right-wing organization known for publishing lists of university professors it deems hostile to conservatives. The student alleged campus police at Arkansas State University violated her First Amendment rights when they stopped her from advertising the organization near the student union. But the campus officers escaped liability in the lower court because of qualified immunity, a doctrine created by the Supreme Court in 1967 that has evolved into a near-impenetrable bulwark for the police.

"Why should university officers," wrote Thomas, "receive the same protection as a police officer who makes a split-second decision to use force in a dangerous setting?" Going further, Thomas questioned whether the judicially-created doctrine should exist at all, an opinion that has garnered more and more bipartisan consensus in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

Thomas and Gorsuch call to overturn landmark Free Speech precedent

The court declined to hear a defamation case brought by a Miami-born international arms dealer—portrayed in the 2016 movie War Dogs—against the author of a book about his life.

The lower court dismissed the suit. It pointed to a landmark 1964 First Amendment decision, in which the high court said that publishers are immune from libel suits brought by public figures, so long as the publishers either didn't know, or had no reason to know, that the information they published was false.

Both Thomas and Gorsuch dissented, arguing the court should overturn the nearly 50-year-old precedent. In the era of disinformation, "lies impose real harm," wrote Thomas. "Instead of continuing to insulate those who perpetrate lies," said Thomas, the court should narrow First Amendment protections.

In a separate dissent, Gorsuch agreed. In 1964, publishers needed protection against libel for unpopular opinions to survive. Indeed, the court's 1964 decision was first used to protect civil rights leaders who had published a New York Times ad criticizing the Montgomery, Alabama police for repeatedly arresting Martin Luther King Jr.

But, said Gorsuch, in 2021, "it's less obvious what force [libel protections have] in a world in which everyone carries a soapbox in their hands," referring to smartphones. Now, Gorsuch wrote, "the deck seems stacked against those with traditional (and expensive) journalistic standards—and in favor of those who can disseminate the most sensational information as efficiently as possible without any particular concern for truth."

Another execution

On top of its decisions about cases next term, the justices gave Alabama the green light to execute Matthew Reeves, whose death sentence was recently overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is the second time the justices have ruled against Reeves, who in 1998 was convicted for murder in Alabama. In 2002, Reeves first challenged his sentence in state court. He argued that because of his low IQ, his lawyer should have hired an expert to evaluate him for an intellectual disability. After 15 years of appeals, the Supreme Court denied his claim in 2017. So Reeves appealed his claim through the federal system.

But on Friday, the high court again rejected his challenge, thus allowing Alabama to move forward with his execution. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan, dissented, criticizing the state court for its brusque dismissal of Reeves's claim.

Sotomayor drew attention to "a troubling trend in which this court strains to reverse summarily any grants of relief to those facing execution." The court, wrote Sotomayor, "turns deference" to state courts "into a rule that...relief is never available to those facing execution."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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