Natasha Felders’s Work Highlighted by Op-Ed

In an Op-Ed written for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE), Stoneleigh Foundation Senior Program Officer Marie N. Williams writes about the need for a more gender-responsive juvenile justice system (“Start Small: the Key to a More Gender-Responsive Juvenile Justice System“). As the excerpt below explains, YSRP is pushing for reform of how women and girls are treated in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. “In Philadelphia, the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), whose core mission is to support youth prosecuted in the adult system and juvenile lifers, has begun such an effort. At YSRP, Stoneleigh Foundation’s Emerging Leader Fellow, Natasha Felder, is attacking the problem at the frontline by developing a toolkit for defense attorneys to recognize and help address some of the needs presented by young women when they come into contact with the juvenile justice or adult criminal justice system. Many of them are issues that could make adequately defending them more complex than it might be for boys.”