Locking Up Fewer Children

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In the 1990s, states and localities began sending more and more children to juvenile lockups, often for months, while they awaited trial for nonviolent offenses or even noncriminal behavior like being “unruly.” This was a disaster. Children who spend time in detention are far more likely to leave school, suffer alcohol or drug abuse problems or commit violent crimes as adults.

A far better approach — for these young people as well as overburdened government budgets — is to lock up only truly dangerous children and enroll the rest in community-based monitoring programs.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which focuses on disadvantaged children, gave a boost to this approach by underwriting juvenile justice reform projects in five states in the early 1990s. The experiments showed that closely supervising young offenders, instead of incarcerating them, did not increase the youth crime rate or the risk to public safety. Similar programs have since been adopted in 110 jurisdictions in 27 states and the District of Columbia. According to a new study from the foundation, the results have been astonishing: Many jurisdictions have managed to cut the number of children in detention by half or more; in many, the youth crime rate has declined.

The programs invite collaboration among all of the major players, including prosecutors, probation officers and public defenders. Children who present no safety threat remain in custody for the shortest possible time. Meanwhile, new screening practices allow judges and other officials to decide more accurately and quickly which children require secure detention and which of them can be released to their families or to the care of community programs while they await their day in court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14fri3.html?th&emc=th