A few days before Christmas in 2015, a 54-year-old immigrant named Jose Manuel Azurdia Hernandez began vomiting in his cell at a detention center in Adelanto, California.
Children in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems have long been getting poor legal representation that completely alters the course of their lives, sources say.
Black youth are less than 27 percent of Louisville’s youth population, but they represented more than 75 percent of the youth bookings in Louisville’s secure detention center last year.
When a youth is accused of a crime in Kentucky, an adult has to make a choice in nearly every step that follows. And a disproportionate number of the youth denied a second chance are black.