ECHOES JOURNALISM INITIATIVE
The Echoes Journalism Initiative creates first-person, youth reported stories on all the ways the criminal justice system interacts with young adults. From the school-to-prison pipeline, community policing, restorative justice projects, juvenile detention, to “raise the age” debates, our stories examine both the scientific research as well as the lived experience of youth as they intersect with systems of crime and punishment.
recent projects
Columbia University Justice Lab Collaboration
Echoes Journalism Initiative partnered with the Columbia University Justice Lab on a series titled “Emerging Adult Journalists Explore Emerging Adult Justice”
Part 1: What is an Emerging Adult? What has brain research taught us about young adult development? What if the justice system took this research seriously? What does “Forking a Lawn” really mean?
Part 2: The research to policy gap. What does it look like when emerging adulthood is taken seriously by a correctional facility.
Part 3: Racial Disparities. We all know racial disparities plague the justice system, and in fact they’re at their highest for emerging adults. But what if another way is right under our noses.
Part 4: Collateral Consequences. What if we’re giving permanent punishment to temporary behavior? When might continued punishment be making our society less safe?
Reimagining Justice in Connecticut - NowThis News
Produced in collaboration with the Council on State Government’s Justice Center, a look at bold experiments in CT corrections.
Sherrill Roland’s Jumpsuit Project
Artist Profile
why youth-reported media?
Why youth-reported journalism? Young adulthood is critical age – it’s when we’re the most impressionable, and our minds are the most malleable. It’s also when we’re most impulsive, volatile, and peer oriented, so its not totally surprising that youth age 16-25 commit a disproportionate amount of crimes.
Over the last decade, neuroscience has given us huge insights into how different “emerging adult” brains are from older adults. And dozens of projects around the country have found highly successful strategies to engage with this population, in ways that serve justice and improve public safety. Yet a huge information gap exists, and our criminal justice systems is often badly out of sync with best practices.
The goal is to report on this critical issue of emerging adulthood and criminal justice, in a way that’s grounded in the thinking, feeling, and lived experiences of young adults.
Our process involves our youth reporters going through extensive video production and journalism training. We then research and develop stories, under the mentorship and guidance of professional journalists. Sometimes the stories come from reporters’ own lives, sometimes it's a topic the whole group feels passionately about. Either way – goal is to tell stories rooted in distinct mindset of young adulthood – a mindset too often misunderstood in criminal justice world.