Blog

Congratulations to the 2022 PbS Employment Matching Award recipients. Established in 2017 to encourage meaningful work opportunities for young people in the juvenile justice system, this year’s 14 recipients will be awarded up to $1,000 to match their summer season earnings. The award recipients are from the five following facilities: Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facilit ...

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2022 PbS Staff Scholarship Award. The PbS Scholarship Fund was established in 2016 to inspire, encourage and assist young people and staff pursuing post-secondary education. This year, five staff members across the nation received a PbS scholarship to further their studies and continue their dedication and commitment to young people. We ...

This 2022 PbS Kids Got Talent Contest Finalist Spotlight features a group original song titled “My Life,” from the Stevenson House Detention Center in Kent County, Delaware. Opening the performance with a prayer, the track begins, and we join one of the artists as he holds up the song title scrawled on a sheet of white paper. He stands solemnly inside the doorway of his concre ...

A finalist in the detention and assessment category for the 2022 Barbara Allen-Hagen Award, Hartford Juvenile Detention Center (HJDC) decided to focus on safety when the team analyzed data from outcome measures and noticed a significant increase in staff fear beginning in the spring of 2018. By October of 2018, half of the staff population reported fearing for their safety with ...

This 2022 PbS Kids Got Talent Contest Finalist Spotlight features an original song titled “Where I’m from,” written and performed by a talented group from the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center. The foursome, dressed in black and donning identical masks, open the performance with choreographed moves, spreading to a box formation before one artist raps into the micro ...

An original song titled, “Leave a Message,” from the Rogue Valley Youth Correctional Facility is the focus of this 2022 PbS Kids Got Talent Contest Finalist Spotlight.  The artist opens the performance with a phone to his ear, listening ring by ring to the absence of someone on the other end of the line. An automated recording of a woman’s voice finally fills the void. “Hello. ...

Named a finalist in the detention and assessment category for the 2022 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award, Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center focused on staff safety to address high levels of fear during the pandemic. After reviewing results from the October 2020 data collection, Bridgeport Detention was above the national field average for the number of staff members who did not ...

The focus of this 2022 PbS Kids Got Talent Contest Finalist Spotlight is a performance from IYC Warrenville, where one talented artist gave a powerful rendition of Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama”. It’s no easy task to perform a hit song from the iconic singer widely known as the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul”, never mind an a cappella version. Yet the artist had the Selection Committ ...

This 2022 PbS Kids Got Talent Contest Finalist Spotlight is on Long Creek Youth Development Center, where two talented artists submitted impressive performances, wowing the Selection Committee. Singing a song titled “I am the Future,” the artist opened the performance with the words “Somali Barbie” inscribed against a backdrop framed with the signature stars and colors from th ...

Mt. Meigs Campus, located in Montgomery County, Alabama, was selected as a finalist in the corrections category for the 2022 PbS Barbara Allen-Hagen Award. The 780-acre campus, with an average daily male population of 112 residents aged 13-18, has a dedicated staff who’ve worked diligently over the last several years to transform an old correctional facility and approaches to a ...