Juvenile Justice

A dozen years ago, New York state revealed that taxpayers were shelling out $140,000 to $200,000 each year to house each young person in the state’s juvenile facilities.

As California prepares for a major shake-up of its juvenile justice system, a new report suggests that counties are increasingly relying on jail-like juvenile halls to hold youth for long periods of time on indeterminate sentences.

Team Biden has already started to fill in White House leadership amidst what promises to be the most awkward transition in modern history. It won’t be long until it’s time to start filling in nominees across the executive branch, including some of the key positions on child welfare and juvenile justice. 

A leading philanthropy this week announced the next group of organizations to receive training aimed at encouraging juvenile justice professionals to embrace and spread the principles of positive youth development.

In the view of the reformers, frontline staff should be less concerned with sternly enforcing rules to keep kids in line and more about building on the strengths and assets that they and their families bring to the table.

For more than a decade, hundreds of disabled students locked up in a large Georgia jail have not been getting the special education services they’re entitled to under federal law, but that may soon start to change.

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Limited federal oversight looks likely to return to New York City’s Horizon Juvenile Center, a move that comes a few months after the city phased responsibility for some kids at the center out of the hands of its Department of Correction.

Newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón — who last week unseated incumbent prosecutor Jackie Lacey to be top cop in America’s second largest city — has vowed to act on his campaign pledge: Gascón has stated he will not pursue death penalty convictions and will “immediately stop prosecuting children as adults.”

Los Angeles County voters have handily approved a ballot measure that requires the county to dedicate at least 10% of its unrestricted funds to youth development and other community investments as well as alternatives to incarceration rather than law enforcement and jail.