Community Safety

In 2013, Desiree Parreira lived a parent’s worst nightmare when her 16-year-old daughter, Samantha, was shot and killed at a house party near Merced in California's Central Valley. The ensuing grief was unbearable. But in a county wracked by violence, she's not alone.

Violence is a part of daily life in the most segregated elementary schools in Pinellas County, Florida. Five elementary schools had more violence than all 17 high schools combined.

"As a journalist and as a person, there’s something therapeutic about being entrusted with someone’s personal rock bottom, and being a vessel for their story," writes journalist Jazelle Hunt. "There’s something therapeutic and powerful about standing with someone in his or her pain."

Reaching Spanish speakers with information about car seat safety is critical as Hispanic children in the U.S. are killed or injured in car accidents at significantly higher rates than other children.

A look inside the Tuscon classroom where parents and grandparents will soon be able to learn how to install car seats properly. The training initiative started after a report found that 4 in 5 parents are doing it wrong, with significant safety hazards to children as a result.

Roughly four out of five parents don't install car seats correctly, and the results can be disastrous. A new investigative series by The Arizona Republic finds that Hispanic and Native American children were from two times to as much as 10 times likelier not to be properly restrained.

Balitmore Sun reporter Andrea McDaniels set out to tell the stories of the children and families who aren’t the direct victims of violence but who suffer its horrible after-effects for years afterwards. Almost nothing about the project was easy, as McDaniels and editor Diana Sugg recently shared.

A casual observer watching the preschool-aged children bounce around the outdoor playground at the Children’s Institute wouldn’t immediately notice anything amiss. Except that these kids wouldn’t be here had something not already gone very wrong in their young lives.

While Americans tend to think of sex trafficking as a problem that happens overseas, the United States is a major sex trafficking hub for obvious reasons—it's a rich country. An estimated 100,000 children in the U.S. are forced into the sex trade every year.

In Arkansas, judges make frequent use of their authority to lock up children known as "status offenders," despite the fact that they haven't broken any laws. Few people outside the juvenile justice system know how easy it is for a child to end up behind bars. Even fewer see the long-lasting impact.