Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/youth-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.
We recently conducted a survey of juvenile justice agencies on their staff hiring and retention challenges. Over 200 individual state and local juvenile corrections and probation agencies representing 37 states and over 190 counties reported that they are facing greater staffing difficulties than at any time in the past 10 years.
Read the individual stories of Xochtil Larios, youth justice coordinator, Jacob Jackson, a community organizer, and Israel Villa, mentor to many juvenile justice-involved youth, about how personal experiences in the juvenile justice system shape their individuals' advocacy of justice reform.
In the months leading up to the June 30 shutdown of California’s more than 100-year-old lockups for juveniles, teenagers through 25-year-olds convicted of crimes such as robbery, rape and murder were transferred to county-run juvenile detention facilities nearer to their homes.
At the heart of this issue is whether it is appropriate to sentence children to die in prison, with no chance of being considered for release. Half a century ago, offenders in the U.S. of any age were rarely sentenced to life without parole, and it was not until 1978 that states began trying youths as adults. Between 1985 and 2001, however, youths convicted of murder were actually more likely to enter prison with a life sentence than adults convicted of the same crime.
People ages 18 to 25 are over-represented at every stage of the criminal legal system and have the highest recidivism rate of any age group. It is obvious that we are responding badly to the developmental needs of these emerging adults — and “we” includes everything from schools and health care to law enforcement, judicial and correctional systems.
Girls accounted for 31% of all arrested youth in 2019, an increase from 18% in 1990, according to a new report from The Sentencing Project also finding that, as with boys, fewer girls ultimately were incarcerated between 2000 and 2019.
“How would you want your kids, if they were in these facilities, to be treated?”
That question was raised by formerly incarcerated youth and current juvenile justice advocate James Martinez at a meeting of California’s Board of State and Community Corrections. The BSCC is a state agency tasked with overseeing jails and county-level juvenile facilities in California. In early November 2022, the board’s Executive Steering Committee, met to begin rewriting critically important rules governing juvenile camps, ranches and halls.
The New Mexico Corrections Department has lost track of nearly two dozen prisoners in its custody who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, an error that could keep these “juvenile lifers” from getting a chance at freedom under a bill likely to be passed by the state Legislature within days.
Liz Ryan said she was surprised when the White House tapped her — a prominent advocate who has dedicated her professional life to reforming the juvenile justice system — to be the administrator of the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in May 2022.