Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/community-based-alternatives/)
“Smart, Safe, and Fair: Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crimes, and Reduce Racial Inequality,” published through a collaboration between the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) addresses how to help youth...
Four days after New York’s new Raise the Age law began to be implemented in October, I was fortunate to be invited to observe the Youthpart in Brooklyn. The Youthpart is a hybrid court that was created to address 16- and 17-year-olds charged with felonies.
Over the last two decades, the juvenile justice system has been celebrated for driving a decline in the use of confinement as lawmakers and practitioners changed policies and practices to move away from costly and ineffective use of secure facilities.
The toughest issue facing advocates working to abolish youth prisons may be what replaces them. It’s both an obstacle to change and a practical question that follows success.
As Bill Gates famously said in his book, “The Road Ahead” (1996), “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
Juvenile justice reinvestment, which shifts funding from corrections-based approaches toward cost-effective community-based services for youth, has gained momentum in states throughout the U.S. in recent years.
In 2008, Wendy Jones’ teenage son, Corby, began getting into trouble with the law: skipping school, doing drugs, stealing. His behavior soon landed him in Benton County, Arkansas, juvenile court, followed by a stay in the local juvenile detention center, or JDC, a 36-bed, jail-like facility in Bentonville, not far from the home offices of Walmart.
Two decades ago, Arkansas had the lowest delinquent youth confinement rate in the region and one of the lowest in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
James Bell, founder and president of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, told a gathering of juvenile justice reformers that it was time to begin “an uncomfortable” conversation about racial disparities in the youth justice system.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ambitious plan to divert thousands of the county’s youth away from the juvenile and criminal justice systems, connecting them instead to a comprehensive array of supportive services.