The Kids of Rutherford County is an investigative journalism podcast about the Rutherford County, Tennessee juvenile arrest and incarceration scandal. It is hosted by Meribah Knight and produced by Serial Productions, ProPublica, and Nashville Public Radio.
The show is a four-episode series hosted by Meribah Knight and produced by Serial Productions , [1] in collaboration with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio. [2] The first two episodes were released on October 26, 2023. [3] The two remaining episodes were released weekly on the following Thursdays. [4] The show uses the same style presentation as Serial . [5]
The show starts with a fight between middle school children; subsequently, several minors were arrested and sent to juvenile detention, some of whom were not present during the fight. [6] Some of the wrongfully incarcerated children had also been subjected to solitary confinement. [7]
Donna Scott Davenport was the county's singular juvenile court judge. Davenport had designed and oversaw an extralegal system which had dominated the juvenile court, including all cases before it, during 2000 through 2022. [8] [9] The show investigates a decade of questionable cases involving a large number of children. [10]
Levardis Robert Martyn Burton Jr. is an American actor, director, and television host. He played Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), Kunta Kinte in the ABC miniseries Roots (1977), and was the host of the PBS Kids educational television series Reading Rainbow for 23 years (1983–2006). Burton received 12 Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award as host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow.
Rutherford County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is located in Middle Tennessee. As of a 2023 estimate, the population was 367,101, making it the fifth-most populous county in Tennessee. A study conducted by the University of Tennessee projects Rutherford County to become the third largest county in Tennessee by population by 2050. Its county seat is Murfreesboro, which is also the geographic center of Tennessee. As of 2010, it is the center of population of Tennessee. Rutherford County is included in the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
This American Life (TAL) is a weekly hour-long American radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired on November 17, 1995, under the show's original title, Your Radio Playhouse. The series was distributed by Public Radio International until June 2014, when the program became self-distributed with Public Radio Exchange delivering new episodes to public radio stations.
In criminal justice systems, a youth detention center, known as a juvenile detention center (JDC), juvenile detention, juvenile jail, juvenile hall, or more colloquially as juvie/juvy or the Juvey Joint, also sometimes referred to as observation home or remand home is a prison for people under the age of majority, to which they have been sentenced and committed for a period of time, or detained on a short-term basis while awaiting trial or placement in a long-term care program. Juveniles go through a separate court system, the juvenile court, which sentences or commits juveniles to a certain program or facility.
The California Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), previously known as the California Youth Authority (CYA), was a division of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that provided education, training, and treatment services for California's most serious youth offenders, until its closure in 2023. These youths were committed by the juvenile and criminal courts to DJJ's eleven correctional facilities, four conservation camps and two residential drug treatment programs. The DJJ provided services to juvenile offenders, ranging in age from twelve to 25, in facilities and on parole, and worked closely with law enforcement, the courts, district attorneys, public defenders, probation offices and other public and private agencies involved with the problems of youth. The DJJ underwent reorganization as required by a court agreement and the California State Legislature after widespread criticisms of conditions at its youth prisons. The agency's headquarters were in Sacramento, California.
Starlee Kine is an American public radio producer and writer.
Juvies is an MTV, and later MSNBC television show following minors in the Lake County, Indiana Juvenile Justice Complex. The series' first and only season debuted on MTV in February 2007, and has re-aired regularly since. On July 30, 2008, the NWI Times reported that production was underway for another documentary series also to be filmed at the Lake County Juvenile Justice Complex in Crown Point, Indiana. The MSNBC version, re-branded as "Lockup - Lake County Juvenile Justice," takes a deeper look at the inner workings of the LCJC detention and court systems, and it ventures into other correctional facilities in Indiana, and premiered on MSNBC on July 4, 2009 at 10:00 E.T.
ProPublica, legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. ProPublica's investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time investigative reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. In some cases, reporters from both ProPublica and its partners work together on a story. ProPublica has partnered with more than 90 different news organizations and has won several Pulitzer Prizes.
The kids for cash scandal centered on judicial kickbacks to two judges at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, US. In 2008, judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella were convicted of accepting money in return for imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles to increase occupancy at a private prison operated by PA Child Care.
The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, which reflects the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2010, approximately 70,800 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. As of 2006, approximately 500,000 youth were brought to detention centers in a given year. This data does not reflect juveniles tried as adults. As of 2013, around 40% were incarcerated in privatized, for-profit facilities.
The Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) is a state agency of Massachusetts. Its administrative office is headquartered in 600 Washington Street, Boston. The agency operates the state's juvenile justice services and facilities for incarcerated children.
Edward Wayne Edwards was an American serial killer and former fugitive. Edwards escaped from jail in Akron, Ohio, in 1955 and fled across the country, holding up gas stations. By 1961, he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Mike Sparks is an American politician. A Republican, he represents District 49 in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life; as of July 2020, it is owned by The New York Times.
John Ray Clemmons is an American politician from the state of Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he serves in the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing the 55th district, in West Nashville.
The juvenile justice system and jail of Rutherford County, Tennessee became a subject of state-wide, national and international controversy in the 2020s, when a journalistic investigation revealed a pattern of abnormal and illegal incarceration of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children in the county's juvenile jail at a rate ten times the state's average.
Donna Scott Davenport is the first judge to have overseen the Rutherford County, Tennessee juvenile justice system, filling the newly created position in 2000. She is also a former adjunct professor at her alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). She presided over the juvenile court and legal system for the county, appointed magistrates, set protocols, directed police and heard cases involving minors, including parents charged with child neglect. Despite published reports that Davenport operated juvenile court outside of the tenets of law, including by her own admission, Davenport remained on the bench until retiring at the end of her term in September 2022 while lawmakers debated ending her tenure sooner. Her actions while on the bench are the subject of a four-part podcast, The Kids of Rutherford County.
Green Hill School is part of Washington state's correctional system under the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, and is the state's only maximum security penitentiary for youths. It is located in the South Market district of Chehalis on I-5, next to Recreation Park.
The Promise: Life, Death and Change in the Projects is a podcast produced by Nashville Public Radio.
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