Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/alternatives-to-incarceration/)
On Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that the state will try to shut down its three large youth correctional facilities in favor of building smaller and less centralized units. The decision came at the urging of a working group assembled by the governor that also recommended the state stop incarcerating teenagers convicted for the first time of non-violent crimes and children under 14 in state youth prisons.
Juvenile advocates and researchers in Illinois came together for a one-day workshop to discuss juvenile arrest data from the Austin and Lawndale neighborhoods of Chicago along with the alternatives to incarceration for juvenile offenders. Austin, Chicago’s largest neighborhood by population, ranked third in total juvenile arrests in 2010. The number of kids under the age of 17 arrested in Chicago has dropped in recent years, according to a report released by the First Defense Legal Aid and Project NIA during the seminar. But advocates say the system hasn’t changed enough and continues to disserve kids on the west side of the city, especially African Americans. In 2008 African Americans accounted for 78 percent of juvenile arrests in the city of Chicago, Hispanics for 18 percent and whites for just 3.5 percent, according to the same report.