For more than a decade, the nation’s juvenile justice systems have steadily cut back on unnecessary use of incarceration for young people. The reduction in the use of youth lock-ups have been good for kids and for public safety. Reforms that resulted in incarcerating fewer kids, statistically improve the chances of success for youth when they become adults, while also corresponding with the steady decline in juvenile crime during the same period.

Yet, according to an important new report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, titled “Transforming Juvenile Probation: A Vision for Getting It Right, while there has a large reduction in the use of youth confinement, there has not been a corresponding downturn in the use of the justice system’s primary alternative to youth lock-ups, namely the juvenile probation system.

Annually, a half-million U.S. youth are given some form of probation, instead of being placed in locked facilities, according to Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention statistics. This means that a great deal is expected of county juvenile probation systems as the primary alternative to lock-up for lawbreaking youth. These expectations—from judges, prosecutors and the public—are both “unrealistic” and “conflicting” according to the new report.

[For more on this story by Celeste Fremon, go to http://witnessla.com/crucial-n...e-probation-systems/]