The Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ), a national advocacy organization dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the adult criminal justice system, released a new report today, Zero Tolerance: How States Comply with PREA’s Youthful Inmate Standard. This report explores how states house youth under 18 in prisons in the new age of PREA compliance and enforcement. Furthermore, this report highlights national trends in juvenile arrests, crimes, and incarceration of children in the adult system.
The United States' extraordinary use of adult correctional facilities to house youth presents numerous concerns, including serious, long-term costs to the youth offender and to society at large. Science and research conducted over the last 20 years confirm what common sense tells us: kids are different. Despite evidence based research highlighting the harms of placing youth in adult facilities and the long term costs of incarceration to youth and society, 1200 youth are in state prisons on any given day across the country.
According to CFYJ's Policy Director and author of the report, Carmen Daugherty, there is much at stake if PREA is not enforced.
[For more of this story go to http://cfyj.org/news/cfyj-news...ance-and-enforcement
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