In a piece recently published with the Scholars Strategy Network, authors Daniel Macallair and Carina Gallo make the case for a federal conversion program for empty and underused juvenile detention facilities across the nation. This brief was written with Gabriel Singer, Project Rebound Graduate Student at San Francisco State University and SSN Graduate Fellow.
Across the United States, hundreds of juvenile facilities have closed as youth confinement has fallen, while many remaining institutions operate well below capacity. They are a physical legacy of an obsolete policy era — buildings constructed or expanded amid expectations of sustained growth in youth confinement. Today, unused and underused facilities drain public budgets and deteriorate while communities around them go without housing, health care, and opportunity. A growing number of states and localities have shown that these sites can be put to far better use. What is missing is a national framework to help them do it.
Read the full brief on the Scholars Strategy Network website.