Should Philly Keep Holding Kids in Its Adult Jails?

Kate Burdick, staff attorney at the Juvenile Law Center, pointed to a 2014 study of a facility where the two groups of juveniles were housed together: It found that the kids facing adult charges actually had a lower rate of incidents in the institution than those facing juvenile charges.

“The trend nationwide is toward moving youth tried as adults to juvenile facilities. Many large cities like Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles have done this,” she said. “Young people were safer, and were able to get the services they needed instead of being subjected to really inappropriate, in some cases very draconian, conditions.”