Patrick Jones

Do the crime, do the time behind bars. But once you've been in, it can be tough to stay out. Ian's band is finally taking off. But the band's front man and Ian's best friend, Orlando, can't catch a break as a black kid in their white town. Tension with a security guard lands both Ian and Orlando in jail, and when Orlando is held indefinitely, someone will need to take over the band until he gets out. When Orlando chooses Chase, the band's bassist,...

Do the crime, do the time behind bars. But once you've been in, it can be tough to stay out. Alejandro has served six months for trumped-up charges after a brutal encounter with police. Now that he's out, he's determined to break ties with his gang and forge a new path. But it won't be simple. When Alejandro sees a video of a local girl suffering a similar police assault, he knows he has to meet her. The connection between Alejandro and Chrissie is...

"She is the star player on her basketball team, until her sister is injured in a violent crime. Instantly, her game is derailed, and she becomes a second victim. Can she save her scholarship season?"--

In the United States, the conversation about teen incarceration has moved from one extreme to another. For centuries, execution of juvenile offenders was legal. By the twenty-first century, the US Supreme Court had moved closer to banning all executions of minors, regardless of the severity of the crime. Since the 1990s, the US juvenile justice system has moved away from harsh punishment and toward alternative evidence-based models that include education,...

"When an African American student transfers from an inner-city basketball team to the suburbs, tension among the players and the coach erupts along racial lines. To the anger of his teammates, the coach kicks him off the team after he gets into a fight. Can a social media movement get him back on the court?"--

When Xavier's father returns to Boston after serving ten years in federal prison, tensions quickly mount and Xavier's anger explodes on the baseball field, making it less likely that he will achieve his dream of playing in the major leagues than that he will follow his father's path.

Since her mother went to prison to await execution, eleventh-grader Camila Hernandez has been shuffled from one aunt to another, avoiding friendships and keeping to herself in hopes no one will learn her secret, and worrying that she will turn out to be a criminal, too.

In this remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, long standing tension between African American and Somali students at Northeast High School in Minneapolis makes love difficult between Rodney, who is on probation, and Jawahir.

Seventeen years after she was born to a prison inmate, Deja agrees to raise her newest half-sister for the first six months, until their mother's next release, but despite the help of friends and relatives and a support program at school, caring for a baby proves to be a monumental task.

Eighteen-year-old José serves as the bridge between his non-English speaking family and the rest of the world, and because his parents are illegal immigrants and extended family lives with them, money is tight so José works nights and arrives at school so tired that teachers at his alternative high school step in to help.