Boone County juvenile facility admitting twice as many Black youth
Just north of Highway 63, a row of trees separates a service road from a gray one-story building dotted with windows just wide enough to allow the width of a face.
The campus expands to reveal an arts center. An American flag waves out front.
Albeit run by a superintendent, this is no school.
A metal fence laced with barbed wire snakes the perimeter of the Robert L. Perry Juvenile Justice Center, where 209 youths were admitted over the last recorded year.
More than half of them were Black.
Since 2020, the total number of admissions has held relatively constant, yet the Black youth population at Perry more than doubled — admission rose by 129% since 2020 at Perry. Meanwhile, white youth admission fell by a third.
“That is deeply troubling,” said Jessica Feierman, Senior Managing Director at the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia advocacy group that works for young people in the legal system. “This dramatic jump in disparities is really heartbreaking.”
She said racial disparities are all too common in the juvenile justice system, but Perry presents an exceptional case.
Missouri has the seventh-most juvenile detention centers of any state. The state has no minimum age for detention, and in its 21 total facilities, one out of every 100 young people in Missouri is incarcerated.
