The juvenile justice system in America is so harsh, so expensive, and so altogether ineffective, that it is “almost Third World in punitive measures,” said New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye at a conference at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Friday. “Shame on us for doing this to our kids, for greasing the downward spiral,” she said, according to conference coverage by The Crime Report.
But the same week, youth justice advocates also saw reason for hope—in a new bipartisan agreement about a groundbreaking, but outdated, bill, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. They hope that its re-authorization can now help improve the conditions in which 60,000 young people are being held in jail or juvenile detention centers at any given time in the United States.
[For more of this story, written by Lauren Kirchner, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...-and-from-themselves]
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