Voices from the Capitol

A candid debate over assigning police officers to schools is overdue in Connecticut. Like the best debate topics, this is not an easy one. The impulse in some quarters to expel police as a backlash against law enforcement would be inappropriate. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, a flurry of maj...

Psychologist Lauren Ruth explains how students of color are disproportionately harmed when schools use zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. Ruth is director of research and policy with Connecticut Voices for Children, which published a report last year on the so-called school-to-prison pipeline in ...

While many Americans watched in horror as family separation policies tore families apart at the border, many of us didn’t know how frequently our laws tear apart families of color here in Connecticut. When judges sentence parents to incarceration, they can unknowingly sentence children to family s...

Advocates for children are offering tepid support for a bill that would require the state Department of Education to study the role of School Resource Officers throughout Connecticut. Several agencies including the Center for Children’s Advocacy and the state Office of the Child Advocate told the ...

A child advocacy group is recommending that state officials place fewer youth in detention and instead fund community support programs that reduce crime and prevent kids from entering the criminal justice system. The state could save as much as $106.21 per child, per day, if fewer kids were placed i...

We are deeply disappointed that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the revised public charge regulations. This rips the very fabric of who we are as a state and a country. All children and families —whether born in the United States or not— deserve better than this. This is a devastating r...

While we are getting very close to the 2020 Census, there is still time to get your state to help fund Census outreach. Connecticut just put money towards the Census, and advocates are seeking more. Maybe what happened in Connecticut can be a model in your state too. When one examines Connecticut st...

November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and the fight continues to erase its stigma. A bad 2020 census count could hurt children in Connecticut. And Connecticut State Police are using social media to report use of force data. We’ll talk about those stories with guests: Ken Mysogland, bureau...

Emily Byrne helped lawmakers count — which in return will help New Haven count. When it really counts. Byrne is the new executive director of Connecticut Voices for Children , a 25-year-old New Haven-based statewide research and advocacy group. On Oct. 30 the group issued a report detailing h...

News story and interview on Voices' research about school resource officers ...