Sat Jun 30, 2012 at 09:14 AM PDT
LGBT youth and juvenile justice
by rserven
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/30/1104700/-LGBT-youth-and-juvenile-justice (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/30/1104700/-LGBT-youth-and-juvenile-justice)
Gay and transgender young people represent 5-7% of the country's youth. So why do they compose 13-15% of the country's young people currently in the juvenile justice system?
The Center for American Progress has a new document on the subject: The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth: An Overview of the Experiences of LGBT Youth in the Juvenile Justice System. The document was prepared by Jerome Hunt and Aisha Moodie-Mills. It is based on research by Angela Irvine of the National Council on Crime and Deliquency.
Since gay and transgender youth are often abandoned by their families and communities and victimized in their schools, they are at extreme risk of entering what CAP calls the school to prison pipeline.