A national juvenile justice campaign launched today with the ambitious goals of halving youth incarceration in 15 states over the next five years while expanding community-based alternatives for offenders.
The Youth First! Initiative — founded by longtime juvenile justice advocate Liz Ryan — will also seek to reduce rampant racial and ethnic disparities in juvenile incarceration.
“The vast majority of [incarcerated] kids are in for things like misdemeanors, status offenses [such as cutting school or alcohol possession], property offenses, drug offenses, even probation and parole violations,” Ryan said. “To me, it just underscores that at a minimum, we could experience another 50 percent drop in youth incarceration.”
[For more of this story, written by Gary Gately, go to http://jjie.org/new-campaign-s...ncarceration/108260/]
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