Our success has been unquestionable. There has been a steep decline in youth incarceration in America and there has even been some progress moving juvenile justice systems away from being punitive and deficit-based and toward positive youth development. Much credit is due to youth justice reform advocates.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s annual count of juvenile facility populations, there has been a 40 percent reduction in youth incarceration in the U.S. in the past 10 years.
In California, the state that once had the largest number of youth locked up, the reductions have been most dramatic. In 1996, there were more than 10,000 youth in the state’s juvenile prisons — today there are less than 700. A more than 90 percent decline.
And all the youth were not just transferred to county lock-ups. A 2015 report by Commonweal revealed that the total population of youth detained in all county facilities across the state is at only half their combined capacity.
[For more of this story, written by David Muhammad, go to http://jjie.org/2017/03/20/let...uch-needed-progress/]
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