Trump agency shifts website to tougher stance on juvenile crime
Originally posted by NBC News.
NBC News quotes CJCJ’s Executive Director Dan Macallair in an article about the Trump administration’s “tough on crime” policies, and the reality of declining rates of youth crime.
From the article:
Led by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the administration has taken a tough line on crime, saying it wants to send more criminals to prison for longer periods of time. The administration’s appointee to run the juvenile justice office is Caren Harp, a onetime prosecutor and public defender. She has said that under previous administrations the office drifted toward “avoiding arrests at all costs and therapeutic intervention,” without enough focus on public safety.
Some juvenile justice experts criticized the get-tough shift, saying it seemed to be more a political stance than an effort at sound policy. Dan Macallair, executive director of the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, which works to cut youth incarceration rates, noted that juvenile crime is at a low ebb, since its 1993 peak. “If they would look at their own numbers,” he said, “they would see this is the best behaved generation of youth” in many years.