By The Annie E. Casey Foundation, March 8, 2021

A year after the coronavirus pandemic began, the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds that a historic drop in the size of the youth detention population at the beginning of 2020 did nothing to reduce the already huge racial and ethnic disparities in who gets detained, despite the health concerns of confinement during the pandemic and a national reckoning about racial justice. In fact, the overrepresentation of Black and Latino youth in detention was worse at the start of 2021 than it was the year prior.

The Foundation’s findings are based on a new survey that measured month-to-month changes in the use of secure detention by juvenile justice agencies in 2020. The Foundation captured trends in close to real time from more than 140 jurisdictions in 33 states, representing more than 30% of the nation’s youth population (ages 10 to 17).

Admissions to detention for all youth, regardless of race or ethnicity, plummeted in 2020. However, of the youth in detention, Black and Latino youth were more likely to linger there than their white peers, who were quicker to be released.

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