From The Imprint:
There is great concern among youth justice advocates that juvenile justice practice may be headed toward a return to the “bad old days” of harsh punishments and mass youth incarceration. Instead, we should be following the path with actual evidence of being effective at reducing crime: applying the principles of Positive Youth Justice. This emerging approach, informed by decades of practice and research, generates far better results for both community safety and the youth it engages.
A top priority of this methodology is to minimize young people’s contact with the legal system. Why? Because research has shown that at virtually every juncture of the juvenile justice process, young people who are diverted to less formal or less restrictive options have better outcomes than those with more restrictive conditions. In fact, evidence overwhelmingly shows that contact with the legal system can have the paradoxical effect of increasing the likelihood that a child will commit another crime — making us all less safe. This applies to arrests, generally, compared to diversion to community-based sanctions such as requiring youth to meet with a counselor or to perform community service. When young people are incarcerated the increased risk of recidivism becomes even more pronounced. Confinement, therefore, should be reserved for the very small number of youth who have committed the most serious and violent offenses.
Another reason for minimizing system contact is that placing a child in a secure facility is extremely expensive — much of the money spent on incarcerating kids could be invested in responses that achieve better results. A 2020 study found, for example, that states pay an average of $588 per day — $214,620 per year — to keep a youth in secure confinement, compared to spending as little as $75 per day to provide community-based services, according to a 2014 study of Florida’s youth justice system. Some California counties reportedly pay more than half a million dollars in a year to keep just one young person in juvenile detention. Continue reading >>>
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