Over the past decade, the vast majority of states have reduced the number of youth they incarcerate in juvenile justice system facilities: There has been a 45 percent decline in the number of youth committed in residential placement between 2001 and 2011.
Despite this progress, many juvenile justice systems and the elected officials who oversee them are still making policy choices that rely on the most costly but least effective response to delinquency. The most recent data show that 62 percent of youth committed and confined in 2011 were there for a nonviolent, non-person offense.
Our continued overreliance on incarceration costs some within our community more than others: For every one white youth confined in 2011, nearly three youth of color were confined. There is evidence that while the overall number of incarcerated youth is declining, the gap between who is confined and who isn’t is widening along racial and ethnic lines.
[For more of this story, written by Amanda Petterutti and jason Ziedenberg, go to http://jjie.org/op-ed-costs-to...p-of-iceberg/108041/]
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