A dozen years ago, former Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank wrote an unlikely best-seller, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” It examined why that state’s once moderate voters had swung hard right in their political leanings, and why less affluent Kansans were consistently voting for ultraconservatives advocating sweeping policy changes that conflicted with these voters’ economic interests.
Frank’s book did not focus on juvenile justice. But while Kansas politics have continued to lurch ever rightward, the state has made encouraging strides in reforming its juvenile justice system. In April, Kansas enacted an ambitious new law sharply restricting the use of incarceration for youth, shortening lengths of stay, limiting confinement for violations of probation and expanding evidence-based community treatment programs.
And it’s not just Kansas. Many other states, including several in the South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia), have also embraced the evidence showing that family-focused and community-based interventions work better than confinement to combat delinquency — and have implemented sweeping reforms to put these ideas into practice.
[For more of this story, written by Dick Mendel, go to http://jjie.org/analysis-on-ju...ith-arkansas/289772/]
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