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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM |
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| www.cjcj.org |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
Sir - Two in five adult prisoners are graduates of institution-based juvenile-justice systems. Rather than rehabilitating our youth, juvenile-correctional facilities train young offenders to be better criminals. Unfortunately, resources are disproportionately channeled toward punitive corrections policies to the exclusion of effective prevention and intervention programmes.
This under-investment in youth services comes at a high cost; it is estimated that for every youth that drops out of high school for a life of crime and drug abuse, it costs taxpayers between $1.7m-2.3m, with secure-detention facilities costing around $200 a day per youth. We now have an ideal opportunity to invest in cost-effective prevention and intervention programmes with proven track records. Model programmes in juvenile-justice reform do exist: The Missouri Division of Youth Services, for example, uses a relatively low-cost, individualised, community-based approach with recidivism rates consistently hovering around 10%, one of the lowest in the country.
Michele Byrnes
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
San Francisco
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