Tear down more state youth prisons, and spend the money saved on community-based alternatives to incarceration.
Doing so, juvenile justice advocates say, would reduce overall youth crime and recidivism, keep nonviolent offenders from being incarcerated, save states millions of dollars and help the juvenile justice system live up to its mission to rehabilitate, not mostly warehouse, youths.
Against this backdrop, the Obama administration is seeking in its fiscal year 2016 juvenile justice budget a $30 million initiative known as “Smart on Juvenile Justice.”
The initiative is designed to help states decrease youth incarceration while increasing community-based alternatives to locking kids up and reducing racial and ethnic disparities.
“The Smart on Juvenile Justice Initiative will drive nationwide system reform, guiding states toward a developmentally informed approach that maximizes cost savings and strategically reinvests those savings into efforts that improve outcomes for youth,” said Robert Listenbee, administrator of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in an emailed statement.
[For more of this story, written by Gary Gately, go to http://jjie.org/provision-aims...nile-justice/108697/]
Comments (1)