Children and teens at a Mississippi juvenile detention center will no longer be locked in cells all day without reason or forced to sleep on the floor in a squalid, overcrowded facility following an agreement the Southern Poverty Law Center has reached in a federal lawsuit.
Five black youths accused of beating a white high school student in Jena, La., amid racial tension sparked by nooses hung on the high school campus, have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor simple battery charges as part of an agreement to resolve a case that sparked a massive civil rights protest on their behalf.