The world has watched with outrage as Black and brown people have been murdered at the hands of police. While these high-profile incidents have shed some light on the abuses of police power, defenders and advocates know all too well that police brutality is much broader than what we see on our screens. Black and brown youth are oppressed by aggressive policing in every aspects of their lives—at home, in school, and in their communities. For many Black and brown youth, the daily, discriminatory, and unnecessary encounters with police is overwhelming and traumatic.
In this session, participants will learn how to incorporate “policing as trauma” arguments into their advocacy at every stage of a delinquency proceeding, including client interviews, detention and probable cause hearings, disposition hearings, Fourth and Fifth Amendment motions to suppress, motions for a trauma-informed mens rea, motions to dismiss in the interest of justice, self-defense arguments, probation violations, and introduction of expert testimony.
Participants will:
Learn from the research and studies on the trauma of policing and racism;
Identify the psychological and emotional trauma caused by policing tactics such as stop and frisk, interrogation, detention, etc.;
Consider the impact of this trauma on the attorney-client relationship and client interviews; and
Develop arguments that raise policing as trauma in a delinquency case.
This training is available to all juvenile defense professionals, including juvenile defenders, policy advocates, investigators, social workers, mitigation specialists, paralegals, clerks, legal secretaries, and other staff members in support of this work.
JDRC members, please sign in to access registration.