But the two systems have more problems — and potentially, more solutions — in common than one might think. The momentum of decarceration in the juvenile justice system must continue, and it should inspire bolder reforms in the criminal justice system as well.
Many terms related to the juvenile justice system are contentious. Finally, the racial and ethnic terms used to describe the demographic characteristics of confined youth e. Finally, because this report is directed at people more familiar with the criminal justice system than the juvenile justice system, we occasionally made some language choices to make the transition to juvenile justice processes easier. In an effort to capture the full scope of youth confinement, this report aggregates data on youth held in both juvenile and adult facilities.
Unfortunately, the juvenile and adult justice system data are not completely compatible, both in terms of vocabulary and the measures made available. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention OJJDP provides easy access to detailed, descriptive data analysis of juvenile residential placements and the youths held in them. For youths in adult prisons, all that is readily accessible in government reports is their number by sex and by jurisdictional agency state or federal.
In annual government reports on jails, youths are only differentiated by whether they are held as adults or juveniles. Slightly more detailed information is reported on youths in Indian country facilities, but the measures reported are not wholly consistent with the juvenile justice survey, and facility-level analysis is necessary to separate youths from adults for most measures.
Despite these challenges, this report brings together the most recent data available on the number of youths held in various types of facilities and the most serious offense for which they are charged, adjudicated, or convicted. The only youth included in this analysis are involved in the juvenile or criminal justice process.
Youth who are put in out-of-home placements because their parents or guardian are unwilling or unable to care for them i. The approximately 5, children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement ORR for immigration reasons are also not included, since they are not held there due to juvenile or criminal justice involvement.
While these various systems that keep children in out-of-home arrangements are interrelated, an analysis of the impact of immigration or child welfare policies on youth justice system involvement is beyond the scope of this report. It includes facility data including facility self-classification type , size, operation local, state, or private , and whether it is locked or staff secure.
It also includes data on the youth held in these facilities, including offense type, placement status, days since admission, sex, race, and age. To compare racial and ethnic representation in juvenile facilities to the general population of all youths 17 or younger in the U. Casey Foundation. The estimate of the number of youth confined for low-level offenses who could be considered for release in the Conclusions section includes 13, held in juvenile facilities on a given day in These youth in Indian country facilities could also be considered for release, but they are not included in this estimate.
We did not include youth held in adult prisons and jails in this estimate because offense types were not reported for them. The estimate of the number of youth detained pretrial who could be considered for release includes 6, youth detained in juvenile facilities and 56 unconvicted youth in Indian country facilities.
At the time of the survey, 6, youth in juvenile facilities were detained awaiting either adjudication, criminal court hearing, or transfer hearing essentially, they were being held before being found delinquent or guilty.
Jails in Indian Country, reports at least 56 unconvicted youth in facilities holding only people age 17 or younger. This may slightly underreport the unconvicted population, because the conviction status of youth in combined adult and juvenile Indian country facilities was not reported separately from the adults, and one juvenile facility did not report conviction status. Youths held in adult prisons and jails were not included in this estimate because conviction status was not reported for these youth.
This report was made possible by the generous contributions of individuals across the country who support justice reform. Individual donors give our organization the resources and flexibility to quickly turn our insights into new movement resources. The author would like to thank her Prison Policy Initiative colleagues for their feedback and assistance in the drafting of this report, as well as reviewers from the Youth First Initiative and the Campaign for Youth Justice.
Elydah Joyce helped design the main graphic, while Bob Machuga created the cover. We also acknowledge all of the donors, researchers, programmers and designers who helped the Prison Policy Initiative develop the Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie series of reports. The non-profit non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.
The organization is most well-known for its big-picture publication Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie that helps the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform. Stay Informed Email: Get the latest updates:. Quick action could slow the spread of the viral pandemic in prisons and jails and in society as a whole. And our other newsletters: Research Library updates? Prison gerrymandering campaign? Support us Can you make a tax-deductible gift to support our work?
Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie Tweet this By Wendy Sawyer Press Release December 19, On any given day, over 48, youth in the United States are confined in facilities away from home as a result of juvenile justice or criminal justice involvement. Demographics and disparities among confined youth Generally speaking, state juvenile justice systems handle cases involving defendants under the age of Most youth are held in correctional-style facilities Juvenile court terminology The terms used in juvenile courts are not the same as those used for adults.
Types of facilities What are the differences between the various kinds of facilities that confine youth? Correctional facilities: Detention center: A short-term facility that provides temporary care in a physically restricting environment for juveniles in custody pending court disposition and, often, for juveniles who are adjudicated delinquent and awaiting disposition or placement elsewhere, or are awaiting transfer to another jurisdiction.
Long-term secure facility: A specialized type of facility that provides strict confinement for its residents. Includes training schools, reformatories, and juvenile correctional facilities. Residential-style facilities: Residential treatment center: A facility that focuses on providing some type of individually planned treatment program for youth substance abuse, sex offender, mental health, etc.
Group home: A long-term facility in which residents are allowed extensive contact with the community, such as attending school or holding a job. Includes halfway houses. Includes ranches, forestry camps, wilderness or marine programs, or farms. Shelter: A short-term facility that provides temporary care similar to that of a detention center, but in a physically unrestricting environment. Boot camp: A secure facility that operates like military basic training.
There is emphasis on physical activity, drills, and manual labor. Length of stay is generally longer than detention but shorter than most long-term commitments.
Other: Includes facilities such as alternative schools and independent living, etc. Many states have successfully reduced reliance on youth jails and prisons and expanded community-based alternatives by moving the fiscal incentives away from incarceration. Several states, including Ohio, Illinois, California, Texas, Alabama, and New York, have experienced huge decreases in youth incarceration after passing legislation to shift resources away from state-run facilities to locally operated, community-based programs.
The ACLU is engaged in several state-based campaigns to promote policy and legislative changes to end the over-incarceration of children and provide them with the tools they need to grow into healthy and productive adults. Alternatives to Youth Incarceration. All Alternatives to Youth Incarceration. The existing research is limited in size, in quality, [and] in its insights into why a prison term might be criminogenic or preventative. The lack of convincing evidence is primarily due to two factors.
First, there are few panel datasets that can track offenders both before and after their time in prison. There are even fewer panel datasets that can link the required labor market, crime, family, and criminal network outcomes. Second, there is selection bias in who is sent to prison. The average convict already has a criminal record and a weak attachment to the labor market, and negative shocks such as job loss often precede imprisonment.
The fact that incarceration is not random suggests that analyses based on observational data are unlikely to capture causal effects. In a series of papers with Manudeep Bhuller and Katrine V. Our work studies the effects of incarceration in Norway, a setting with two key advantages.
First, we are able to link several administrative data sources to construct a panel dataset containing complete records of the criminal behavior and labor market outcomes of every Norwegian who has been incarcerated. We can further link this information to other family members, including children and siblings. Moreover, we have information on co-offending that allows us to map out criminal networks for observed crimes. Second, we can leverage the random assignment of criminal cases to judges who differ in their propensities to send defendants to prison.
Roughly half of all randomly assigned cases result in imprisonment. But some judges send defendants to prison at a high rate, while others are more lenient. In interpreting the findings from our work, it is useful to know how Norway compares with other countries.
Characteristics of prisoners, including demographics and crime categories, are broadly similar in Norway and other countries, including the United States, with the exceptions that the US homicide rate is much higher, and race plays a larger role there as well.
What stands out as different, especially compared with the United States, is the prison system. Norway, like many other European countries, has short spells rather than lengthy sentences, and emphasizes rehabilitation rather than punishment.
In Norway, the average time spent in prison is a little over six months, which is similar to most other Western European countries. This contrasts with average US prison time of almost three years, which is in large part the reason the United States is an outlier in its incarceration rate compared with the rest of the world [Figure 1]. Norway places low-level offenders in open prisons with more freedoms and responsibilities than in US prisons, and high-level offenders in closed prisons with more security.
This provides much more separation between minor and hardened criminals than exists in the United States. There is no overcrowding in Norwegian prisons and better personal safety, with each prisoner being assigned to their own cell and a higher inmate-to-staff ratio than in the United States. Prisons in Norway also offer well-funded education, drug treatment, mental health, and job training programs. Finally, Norway places an emphasis on helping ex-convicts integrate back into society, with access to social-support services and active labor market programs.
Our research on the effects of incarceration on the offender, using the random assignment of judges as an instrument, yields three key findings. We find that incarceration lowers the probability that an individual will reoffend within five years by 27 percentage points and reduces the corresponding number of criminal charges per individual by 10 charges. These reductions are not simply due to an incapacitation effect.
We find sizable decreases in reoffending probabilities and cumulative charged crimes even after defendants are released from prison. Our second result is that bias due to selection on unobservable individual attributes, if ignored, leads to the erroneous conclusion that time spent in prison is criminogenic.
If we simply compare criminal defendants sent to prison versus those not sent to prison, we find positive associations between incarceration and subsequent crime. This is true even when we control for a rich set of demographics, the type of crime committed, previous criminal history, and past employment.
This stands in contrast to our analysis based on the random assignment of judges, which finds an opposite-signed result.
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