Indiana

Indiana’s juvenile detention centers disproportionately detain Black boys

Published

2 years ago

June 6, 2024

Indiana’s juvenile detention centers disproportionately detain Black boys

While the number of children charged with crimes in Indiana has decreased since 2010, the number of Black youth being detained without conviction still remains high.

Cameron Washington, 16, was one of those kids just three years ago.

He was sent to the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center, which sits right in the middle of the historically Black east side Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, for a firearm charge.

“I have done things in my life I’m not proud of. I know what it is like on both sides of the fence. I know what it’s like to be behind a gun and I know the other side,” Washington said.

Washington was one of more than 400 kids in Indianapolis alone whose case was filed by the Marion County Prosecutors Office between January 2020 and March of 2022. There have been challenges tackling disparities in the juvenile justice system for decades and city officials, state lawmakers and local organizations’ next tasks have been trying to eliminate these inequities.

Previous Coverage: Juvenile injustice: Low-income families pay brunt of fees and fines that vary by county

New B.O.Y, new approach

Washington was instructed by the judge in his case to attend New B.O.Y. (Breed of Youth), a mentoring and development program after completing his probation for the firearm charge. The community-based program focuses on school-level intervention for at-risk youth, and works with those who have been in the system.

As is the case with Washington, the organization gets referrals from Marion County Juvenile Division.

“Once I make that phone call and do an intake for a young man, I’ll often hear parents say, ‘I wish we had known about you sooner,’” said Kareem Hines, New B.O.Y’s founder.

Hines said they will often get young men who are immersed in street culture and who have been affected by trauma and struggle to build new relationships.

“It’s hard for them to see outside their neighborhood, to even see past tomorrow,” Hines said.

Indiana juvenile detention rates for Black youth

There are more than 515,000 white youth and more than 93,000 Black youth younger than 18 in the state. While the rate of arrests is relatively the same across racial lines, Black youth charged with a crime have a 30% chance of being detained compared to 15% of white youth, according to the 2022 Indiana Juvenile Justice Racial and Ethnic Disparities Plan.

What is unknown in the data set examined by the plan is what specific crimes were committed, which would impact detention rates.

What the data does show is white youth are diverted out of the juvenile justice system more often than African American youth, making them less likely to have a juvenile record or become repeat offenders.

A short stay in detention has been associated with serious harm to a youth’s mental and physical well-being, stifled education, reduced employment prospects and further justice system involvement, according to a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy that focuses on developing solutions for problems like youth detention.

One of the foundation’s calls to action would be to invest in partnerships with community-based organizations like New B.O.Y.

“Having mentors like Kareem, who has been like a father figure in my life, built me up and changed my mindset. They’re elevating me to things that I never thought I could do before,” Washington said. “Now, I’m able to talk to my community and hold stakeholders accountable for the decisions they make that affect kids and that’s powerful.”

Lawmakers have also made efforts to address the high rate of youth incarceration in Indiana.

Lawmakers pass juvenile justice legislation

In 2022, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed House Bill 1359 into law, a package of juvenile justice policy reforms aimed at improving youth outcomes and using state resources more efficiently. The legislation mandates using risk assessment tools to divert youth away from the system to achieve more consistent and equitable decisions.

It also recommends not detaining children under 12 years old when possible and requires the development of a statewide plan to collect and track key juvenile justice data, according to the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments.

Almost half of U.S. states, including Indiana, do not have a minimum age for juvenile adjudication, which means they can detain children of any age. The National Juvenile Justice Network recommends all states set the minimum age of prosecution at no lower than 14 in accordance with the standards set forth by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

For the 2022-23 school year, the youngest student arrested on school grounds in Indiana was 8 years old.

A total of 155 children, aged 12 and under, were arrested at schools that year.

On the prosecution side of juvenile justice, at least in Marion County, their focus is keeping kids accused of lower-level offenses from going the traditional criminal route.

There were signs of sexual abuse at youth center. State kept sending boys and money anyway.

“I think we’ve done a pretty good job of trying to keep the lower-level stuff out of the juvenile justice system,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears, who stepped into the role in 2019, said.

“We’ve really tried to increase our robust relationships with the schools to make sure that we can identify kids who are maybe going on the wrong path or don’t have the support they need.”

According to the Marion County Probation Department, 726 youths were sent to juvenile detention last year. In 2022, that number was just below 600.

Mears said the reason for the uptick can be traced to an increase in youth being arrested for more serious crimes.

“We are seeing an increase in gun crimes and gun violence,” Mears said. “The No. 1 charge that we have right now in our juvenile court is dangerous possession of a firearm, which is anyone under 18 having a gun. That’s by a pretty significant margin.”

Black youth were eight times more likely to be shot in Indianapolis compared to youth of any other race or ethnicity, according to data compiled by the Indianapolis Gun Violence Project for the first half of 2023.

The prosecutor said the vast majority of juvenile cases that have come across his desk in the last year and a half have been African American boys.

That’s by design says Anthony Beverly, who has been the executive director for Stop the Violence Indianapolis, Inc. for nearly two decades.

Law prompted by IndyStar/ProPublica reporting increases scrutiny of abuse at youth centers

“These systems are messing up our guys, racist policies that are designed to keep their foot on the necks of Black people and people in poverty,” Beverly said. “We look at the gun violence and yet we change a law that says you can have a gun at 18. You can’t buy cigarettes, you can’t go to the club to drink alcohol but you can have a gun. Make it make sense.”

Beverly runs multiple community programs for teen boys, including one that advocates for kids in the courtroom – even if they don’t want the help at the time.

“Street culture has taken over everything in these kids’ lives and it’s been exacerbated through music and social media,” Beverly said. “Social media is a big issue. One of the things that’s most notable is this idea that if you claim to be a tough guy you have to prove it.”

He often tells the boys in his programs that the world is bigger than their neighborhood, but he knows that notion is harder for them to understand when the neighborhood has been their whole world.

Washington, the teen in New B.O.Y, and a few other boys in the program spoke about their experience at an April 30 meeting hosted by the Marion County Public Health Department. The public meeting, organized to address youth gun violence, was held at Martin University, the state’s only predominately Black institution, located in Martindale-Brightwood.

Hines with New B.O.Y wants community leaders to change their approach when it comes to creating real connections with youth because even with so many organizations, he feels there’s a disconnect.

“There has to be an intentional ecosystem that includes the kids, but we have to go where the kids are,” Hines said at the meeting. “We have to stop inviting them to these high-level meetings using some language that goes over their heads just to be transactional.”

Teens from New B.O.Y. start CC Cares nonprofit and host food giveaway

New B.O.Y. mentoring program helps young men “turn pain into purpose,” like two teens who started a nonprofit after respective struggles with DCS and the juvenile justice system.

A part of that ecosystem includes lawmakers, and even with data still being collected, Hines wants to make sure that Indiana’s juvenile justice plan keeps in mind the racial and ethnic disparities of Black youth in the system when coming up with recommendations for solutions.

At the core, Washington feels like a lot of adults don’t understand the reality of young people’s lives and that’s why he wanted to create a non-profit as his way of helping his peers.

“Because no one gave to us in the system, but we’re feeding into our community,” Washington said. “Like a seed, we water the seed, we feed the seed and it grows.”

New B.O.Y is helping them get there.

Jade Jackson’s reporting on was undertaken as a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism grantee of its 2023 Impact Fund for Reporting on Health Equity and Health Systems. Contact Jade Jackson at Jade.Jackson@IndyStar.com. Follow her on Twitter @IAMJADEJACKSON.

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50+ Indiana counties under travel advisories after snow storm. See map

Published

8 hours ago

December 14, 2025

Press Room

50+ Indiana counties under travel advisories after snow storm. See map

At least 50 Indiana counties are under a travel advisory, and 20 counties were issued a travel watch for Dec. 14, following an overnight snow storm.

The Indiana Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) travel advisory map has each county shaded in red for a travel warning, orange for a travel watch, yellow for a travel advisory and gray for a county without an elevated status report on it’s current travel conditions.

Here’s how you can check your county to see where it lands on the map.

Travel advisory

According to DHS, a travel advisory is the lowest level of a related advisory.

“Routine travel or activities may be restricted in areas because of a hazardous situation, and individuals should use caution or avoid those areas,” the department says on its website.

Watch advisory

According to DHS, a watch advisory is issued when conditions are threatening to a county’s safety.

“Only essential travel, such as to and from work or in emergency situations, is recommended, and emergency action plans should be implemented by businesses, schools, government agencies and other organizations,” the department’s website states.

Warning advisory

According to DHS, a warning advisory is the highest level of a related advisory, where people may be told not to travel at all.

“Travel may be restricted to emergency management workers only,” the department’s website states.

Here’s the winter weather info you need

🚨 Indiana Weather Alerts: Warnings, Watches and Advisories.

⚡ Indiana power outage map: How to check your status.

💻 Internet outages: How to track them.

🚫 What you should and shouldn’t do when the power is out.

🐶 Your neighbor left their pet outside. Who you should call.

Indianapolis weather radar

Jade Jackson is a public safety reporter for the Indianapolis Star. You can email her at Jade.Jackson@IndyStar.com and follow her on X, formerly Twitter @IAMJADEJACKSON.

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Indiana

What Darian DeVries, Tucker DeVries Said After Indiana Basketball’s Loss at Kentucky

Published

20 hours ago

December 14, 2025

Press Room

What Darian DeVries, Tucker DeVries Said After Indiana Basketball’s Loss at Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Indiana basketball coach Darian DeVries and senior forward Tucker DeVries met with reporters after the Hoosiers’ 72-60 loss to Kentucky on Saturday night at Rupp Arena in Lexington.

Here’s what the DeVries duo said during their near-seven-minute press conference.

Q: I guess, Darian, it’s sort of another night where it feels like it just kind of gets difficult to really break down an opponent off the dribble, kind of get that inside-out sort of paint touch to three looks you want, just like what, I guess, are you guys, what’s not happening there, what’s just kind of sort of failing at the source offensively when that’s not working?

DD: Yeah, I thought the first half, you know, we got some pretty good action, pretty good movement, I thought the second half, Kentucky certainly turned up the pressure and was able to get into us and we didn’t respond well enough and we turned the ball over too much and live ball turnovers against them are really hard because now they’re out in transition playing in space, so the turnovers and the offensive rebounding, I mean, that flipped the game around that second half.

Q: On Kentucky’s long run, what was the problem there?

Yeah, I thought the turnovers, it was a combination of things, I thought, you know, we left our feet a few times, I thought we just, you know, got on our heels a little bit and didn’t play as disciplined as we needed to, you know, as that, you know, the crowd got cranked up and things, that’s the time where you got to really dig in a little bit more, your screen’s got to be better, you got to play off of two feet more, and then the offensive rebounds, you know, they just went and got them and, you know, we didn’t do a good enough job of creating space and getting bodies and going and securing the ball.

Q: What do you think you need to improve on, the team needs to improve on against ball pressure at the point of attack?

DD: Yeah, the number one thing when you get at ball pressure is everything from an execution standpoint and a movement standpoint, it’s just got to be done with more force, you can’t continue just to get pushed out and everybody stands, so you have to find ways to give yourself up with a back hook, give yourself up with a screen, set up those screens with more force, you know, and get some movement to, you know, even as, you know, they had gotten ahead and we started to break it off a little bit, once we got movement again, we were able to get those clean looks or better looks, so it’s something we got to get better at, there’s no question.

Q: Tucker, your individual line tonight was really great, I mean, your effort was fantastic, 15 points, 7 rebounds, a lot of the three point shots tonight didn’t go down like they normally do for the Hoosiers, what do you think that is, was it just not seeing the basket as well, was it the defense, was it not in the offense where you were getting clean looks?

TUCKER DEVRIES: To be honest, making and missing shots, I thought tonight, honestly, wasn’t a problem, I know, certainly, I did not shoot it great, as a team we didn’t shoot that great either from three, but, you know, even with that being said, I think there were certainly areas that we needed to be a lot better at, as a group, and if we were able to, you know, especially in the second half, execute in those areas, I think that would have made up for some of those, you know, shooting habits and miscues, but, you know, making them missing shots sometimes is basketball, but I thought in the other areas, if we could just, you know, execute there a little bit.

Q: On that, if shots maybe weren’t the problem, what kind of was, do you think?

TUCKER: I mean, he hit on it pretty good, the turnovers and obviously the offensive rebounds they had, especially in the second half. I mean, I take full responsibility for both of those areas. Obviously, four turnovers is far too many. As a group, I think when they pick up the pressure, I think we just need to really focus on our execution a little bit more on every possession. But good thing is we get a good week here before we play again to really dial in on some of those areas that we’ve maybe lacked in the beginning.

Q: When Lamar picked up his fourth foul and missed nearly nine minutes, what went wrong offensively?

DD: Yeah, I don’t remember the exact sequences there, but, you know, not having Lamar out there is certainly a big part of our offense, and, you know, his foul trouble tonight certainly limited him with only the 21 minutes because he was, again, he’s, you know, a big focal piece of what we try to run our offense through, so, you know, I believe during that little stretch that he wasn’t out there, that’s when the turnovers started to happen and

we weren’t able to get into, you know, maybe some of our actions the way we needed to.

Q: Darian, you mentioned Kentucky’s offensive rebound and kind of flipping that game. Was that just their physicality, their effort out beating you guys or something else that you saw going on?

DD: Yeah, I thought their effort, their physicality in the second half was, you know, really good. I mean, they certainly cranked it up a notch in that second half and we needed to respond to it, but, you know, I thought their aggressiveness defensively, their aggressiveness in the offensive glass, you know, was ultimately the factor.

Q: Darian, you mentioned Lamar, but how much did the foul trouble for not just him, but other guys, affect you tonight?

DD: I mean, foul trouble is foul trouble. You have it every night, so you’ve got to figure out a way to deal with it and, you know, we just didn’t do a good enough job with that.

Q: Just to follow up on that, with this team, and you’ve talked about sort of where you are with the two bigs and things like that, like does foul trouble become sort of a compounding problem when it disrupts rotations? It felt tonight like maybe guys were just not either on the floor long enough to find the rhythm or maybe had to be on the floor too long because other guys were in foul trouble.

DD: Again, our guys, you know, their numbers are called, they’re ready to go. You know, certainly, you know, a guy like Lamar, you want him out there, but when he’s not out there, I feel very confident that the guys that are coming in are going to do their part and do their job and, you know, we certainly have a lot of faith in them, so, you know, unfortunately it just didn’t work out the way we wanted it to tonight.

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Indiana

Dick Vitale, Charles Barkley team up to broadcast Indiana vs Kentucky

Published

1 day ago

December 13, 2025

Press Room

Dick Vitale, Charles Barkley team up to broadcast Indiana vs Kentucky

Basketball icons Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley headline the broadcasting crew for Indiana vs. Kentucky on Saturday, Dec. 13.

Vitale, a longtime ESPN analyst, and Barkley, a Basketball Hall of Famer-turned analyst, are teaming up to call two games this season, with the first coming between a pair of blue bloods in a nonconference matchup. Dave O’Brien will handle play-by-play duties.

Vitale and Barkley will broadcast together for the second time this season during TNT and CBS Sports’ First Four coverage of the men’s NCAA Tournament in March.

Watch Dick Vitale, Charles Barkley call Indiana vs. Kentucky live with Fubo (free trial)

The humorous duo will be appointment viewing for many college basketball fans, as both are known for their larger-their-life personalities. The team-up became possible after TNT lost its broadcasting rights for NBA games, moving TNT’s “Inside the NBA” to ESPN.

Vitale is returning to regular broadcasting in 2025 after battling multiple forms of cancer since 2021. He has called over 1,000 games for ESPN since joining the network in 1979.

Barkley, an 11-time NBA All-Star, averaged 22.1 points and 11.7 rebounds across his 16-year career. He was drafted No. 5 overall out of Auburn in the 1984 NBA Draft.