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Sara's Story - homeless teen in prison gets second chance

Comunidad para Mujeres girls's prison

Sara* was living on the streets, sometimes with different friends, moving from place to place, when she was arrested by the Mexico City police. She was arrested for petty robbery. Sara, like all kids arrested in Mexico City, was first taken to the police detention for juveniles, Agency 57. After three days she was moved to the pretrial detention facility, Comunidad para Mujeres [Women's Community].

Matching Donations - 40 / 25 Challenge

Our board of directors is putting out a challenge - 40/25. 40 new donors to IJC’s Children in Prison Project, each giving $25 or more, by June 15th, and the board will match it. 

All donations go to support the Children in Prison Project in Mexico. Our current projects include: working with judges to create a pretrial release program in Mexico City, equipping a group home to care for homeless kids coming out of prison, and consulting with various state governments on the need for pretrial release alternatives. As a new non-profit, we need to get the word out about our important work with kids in detention in Mexico. If you have already donated to IJC, send this to your friends and family, and ask them to donate just $25. 

Click Here to Donate Now

Children's Day in Mexico - Don't Forget the Invisible Children

(ESPAÑOL) Today is Día del Niño or Children’s Day in Mexico. Around the city there will be parties, free rides at the fairs for children, even free McDonald’s hamburgers. I am sure that my daughter will come home from her school party with a large bag of candy to rival the Halloween spoils of children in the United States.

Mexico City Reforms its Juvenile Justice System

The Mexico City Assembly passed a new Juvenile Justice Law (Ley de Justicia para Adolescentes) last week. The new law creates an integrated adversarial system for all crimes. This will replace the existing hybrid system where "non-grave" crimes were tried in a semi-adversarial system with oral trials but "grave" crimes were tried under Mexico's traditional inquisitorial system. The differences between the adversarial system and inquisitorial system are significant. The inquisitorial system in Mexico is an off-shoot of a Spanish-style written system, where prosecutors file written briefs and written evidence, the defense gives written responses and the judge makes written rulings. Each step of the process is painful and drawn-out. The adversarial system uses oral hearings where lawyers state their cases orally, the judge responds and provides a ruling at the end of the hearing.

Spring Break in Prison

Visiting Day at adult prison in Mexico City

This week in Spring Break in Mexico. Kids actually have two weeks off from school for spring break. But don't worry, school goes until July14th.

As we are finishing up our work for the week and planning to get out of Mexico City for a few days, it got me thinking about what spring break is like for kids in prison.

Homeless and In Prison - Losing all Hope

I had the great pleasure of meeting with Casa Alianza- Mexico today. They gave me a tour a two of their five youth homes for homeless teenagers in Mexico City. It was an amazing experience. Casa Alianza, known as Covenant House in the US and Canada, is an organization that works with homeless teenagers through North and Central America. They have been in Mexico City for 26 years! There is an amazing amount of overlap between the homeless youth population and children in prison.