+
More

Treating kids like criminals just makes criminals. Kansas finally gets it.

Kansas Senate Bill 367 is a big deal.

Kansas has a major juvenile justice problem on its hands.

With more than 200 centers housing troubled youth across the state, Kansas has an abnormally high rate of young repeat offenders and a high rate of courts removing kids from their homes to stay in such facilities, KMBC 9 News reported. Those two facts could have something to do with one another (which actually makes a lot of sense).

That's why Senate Bill 367 — heralded as "the state’s premier piece of legislation in 2016" — is actually a big deal.



Senate Bill 367 prioritizes treatment and rehabilitation over punishment for many juvenile offenders in hopes it will keep kids from becoming criminals down the road.

Under the law, low-level offenders — kids who aren't considered a threat to public safety — will be less likely to be sentenced to a juvenile center for probation violations, according to The Topeka-Capital Journal. Instead, they'll stay with their families and participate in community programs that provide services like counseling and therapy.

Throughout the next five years, the number of kids sent to out-of-home facilities for their offenses will drop roughly 60%, The Kansas City Star reported. That will save the state about $72 million over that time period — funds that will be redirected toward the community programs.

A detention center for juveniles in France. Photo by Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images.

"Being smart on crime promotes public safety and the rehabilitation of youthful offenders so that they can become law-abiding citizens," saidGov. Sam Brownback, who signed the bill into law on April 11, 2016. "The legislation aligns our juvenile justice system with what the research shows works best to reduce victimization, keep families strong, and guide youth towards a better path."

Brownback is right — research has shown treatment over incarceration has better long-term effects for individuals and communities alike. So why aren't more states on board?

Detention centers are harmful to kids and make it less likely that kids who spend time there will become successful, stable adults. That affects all of us.

According to a report from the Justice Policy Institute, juvenile detention centers can have "a profoundly negative impact on young people’s mental and physical well-being, their education, and their employment." The nonprofit points out these centers can increase rates of depression and suicide among youth, and reduce their ability to retain a job after leaving.

What's more, juvenile centers — like the larger U.S. justice system — disproportionately harm minorities: Even when they commit the same crimes as their white counterparts, black and brown youth are more likely to be detained.

Photo via iStock.

On the other hand, there's plenty of research suggesting that treatment and rehabilitation services are successful at reducing recidivism, the act of falling back into criminal behavior, for adult and youth offenders alike.

Let's hope more state and federal officials take a hint from Kansas and prioritize the long-term wellbeing of our youth.

"The justice system, and therefore, policymakers, need to focus on the root causes of incarceration and on rehabilitation — not just punishment en masse," prisons reform author Christopher Zoukis wrote for The Huffington Post, noting our "youth can change and learn" before going too far down the wrong path.

"Kansas is taking steps in the right direction."

Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less

Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
@Steve_Perrault/Twitter

Some moments never get old.

On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest game show moment of all time.

Carpenter was a contestant on the very first season of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” shot in America. Hosted by the late Regis Philbin, the quiz show featured three "lifeline" options to help them with difficult questions, the most popular being able to “Phone-a-Friend.”

Carpenter had impressively not used a single lifeline for any of his questions. That is, until question 15. The million-dollar question, to be exact.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide is called a silent killer for a reason. Many people don't realize they're experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning before it's too late. The gas is colorless and odorless and tends to have a sedating effect that causes people to sleep through the fatal poisoning. Having carbon monoxide detectors is one of the most effective ways to identify the gas before it's too late to get out of the house, but not every home has one.

A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

Keep ReadingShow less

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

Keep ReadingShow less