West Virginia – The West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP (WV NAACP) has filed suit in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County to remedy West Virginia agencies’ failure to collect data as required by West Virginia law to improve the justice system for children and youth in the state. West Virginia’s juvenile confinement rate and the inequities along racial lines are far above the national average. The suit is West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP v. West Virginia Department of Homeland Security, West Virginia Department of Human Services, & West Virginia Department of Education, and WV NAACP is represented by Democracy Forward and Mountain State Justice.
“The West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP has long advocated for the state to address racial inequities in how young people of color are being treated in schools and carceral settings, including racial bullying, school suspension, and truancy concerns in West Virginia,” said Loretta Young, President of the West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP. “This data is an important tool in that work and by not collecting it, the state is hindering the NAACP from fulfilling its mission. West Virginians deserve to have a government that fulfills its obligations–to know that when the state legislature passes a law near-unanimously and the governor signs it, the state agencies follow that law, just the same as ordinary West Virginians do.”
Every year in West Virginia, approximately 4,000 juveniles appear before a judge for alleged offenses, such as missing too many days of school or running away from a foster home. Many youth become entangled in West Virginia’s juvenile justice system for years. Just a decade ago, West Virginia children were confined at the highest rate in the nation: 330 of every 100,000 children – well above the national average of 152. In response to this crisis, then-Governor Earl Ray Tomblin convened a task force to reform the state’s juvenile justice system. That task force made a series of recommendations, some of which were incorporated into SB393, a popular bipartisan bill that prioritized community-based services and diversion programs as an alternative to incarceration. SB393 requires state agencies to collect data about juvenile justice outcomes in West Virginia to help policymakers ensure reforms are data-driven and based on evidence.
West Virginia state agencies, however, have not been collecting the juvenile justice data, making it harder to know if the state’s efforts to address its crisis of incarcerated youth are working as intended. The lawsuit filed would compel state agencies to establish procedures to collect the data as required by law.
“West Virginia’s legislature adopted, along bipartisan lines, a clear requirement that state agencies collect essential data to understand whether the crisis of incarcerated youth and racial inequities in the state has abated. Our suit filed on behalf of WV NAACP will ensure this critical measure is implemented,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward.
“When West Virginia’s legislature moved to address the crisis in the juvenile legal system in 2015, it clearly understood that data-driven, evidence-based programs were essential to any reform,” added Lesley Nash, Staff Attorney with Mountain State Justice. “The collection of underlying data is clearly an important element of this process, and Mountain State Justice is proud to work with the West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP and the Democracy Forward Foundation to hold the state accountable for its failure to fulfill its data collection obligations under the statute.”
For more information about Democracy Forward, please visit www.democracyforward.org.
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