Recognizing Juvenile Detention Centers Week

Above: Photo of Philadelphia's Youth Study Center, a secure detention facility, by Richard Ross, as part of the Juvenile in Justice project.

The Pennsylvania Senate has designated October 21-25 as "Juvenile Detention Centers Week," providing an opportunity to reflect on the practice of placing juveniles in secure detention facilities—and how a promising national initiative is helping to transform that practice.

In the juvenile justice system, "detention" generally refers to a secure facility where a juvenile is held prior to his or her disposition hearing (or "sentencing hearing," in adult court). Juveniles should be placed in detention only when they pose a significant risk of reoffending or fleeing the court's jurisdiction. But every year, hundreds of thousands of youth who don't pose these risks are held in detention centers that are often dangerous and overcrowded.

How do these youth end up in detention? In many cases, the system can't distinguish which youth pose the risk of re-offending or fleeing the court. Other times, they are detained because of system inefficiencies that have delayed their cases, or because their schools or mental health systems won't or can't provide them with appropriate services. Detention disproportionately impacts our most disadvantaged youth and communities: about two-thirds of those detained are youth of color, and virtually all of the increased use of detention in the past 20 years is due to greatly increased rates of detention for African-American and Latino youth. 

Being held in detention has serious negative consequences for juveniles—and for the public. It severs ties to family and school, costs taxpayers millions of dollars, and has been shown to increase the risk of reoffending. According to Mark Soler, president of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, youth who are detained are statistically much more likely to be incarcerated at the end of the process, as compared to youth who are released to their parents or placed in an alternative program prior to their disposition hearing.

Fortunately, there are effective strategies for curbing the use of detention. For example, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), launched in 1992, promotes reform by focusing on a variety of ways to safely reduce reliance on detention. Now active at over 80 sites in more than 21 states, JDAI is effective because it engages multiple stakeholders—from judges to prosecutors to community representatives—in the search for alternative programs, policies, and practices to reduce detention, improve public safety, and save money.

JDAI’s core strategies include:

• Collaboration between major juvenile justice agencies, governmental entities, and community organizations
• Use of accurate data to diagnose the system’s problems and identify real solutions
• Objective admissions criteria and instruments to replace subjective decisions that inappropriately place children in custody
• Alternatives to detention to increase the options available for arrested youth
• Case processing reforms to speed up the flow of cases so that youth don’t languish in detention
• Reducing the use of secure confinement for “special” cases like technical probation violations
• Deliberate commitment to reducing racial disparities by eliminating biases and ensuring a level playing field
• Improving conditions of confinement through routine inspections

To make sure these strategies remain in place and continue to spread across the country, Juvenile Law Center is partnering with the Casey Foundation to develop a guide that will help state officials embed JDAI’s strategies into their laws, regulations, and/or court rules. This guide will be published later this year. 

Read more about the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative here.