Youth Justice

Today across the United States, thousands of children – disproportionately youth of color – languish in locked facilities, under the watchful eye of prison guards. It is a sober reminder that our nation continues to choose to warehouse our most valuable asset: our children.

Children are too often referred to a punitive criminal justice system for misbehaviors that would more appropriately be handled within families, schools and communities. Despite research showing that incarceration leads to high youth recidivism rates, as well as poor education, employment, and health outcomes for youth, prosecutors and the courts often fail to use alternatives to incarceration that have been shown to be more effective at rehabilitating young people. Youth of color are disproportionately likely to suffer the harms of these failed policies and practices.

Ignoring the well-established differences between youth and adults, increases recidivism rates, increases youth suicide rates, and exposes youth in adult jails and prisons to high rates of sexual abuse and suicide. This harms our youth and harms our communities. There is a better way.

Public Welfare Foundation focuses its youth justice investments primarily in three areas:

• Closing youth prisons and developing alternatives to incarceration
• Keeping youth out of the adult criminal justice system
• Addressing racial disparities

Prison is not good for kids or for public safety. Research consistently shows that secure custody does more harm than good and can increase a youth’s risk of engaging in crime.

By contrast, studies reinforce that local interventions, not prison, are more likely to get a youth back on track and improve community safety.

Yet each day approximately 48,000 youth are held in youth facilities across our country, many for low-level offenses and technical parole violations. More effective alternatives exist, including for those youth who have committed more serious offenses.

Too many of these youth are children of color who have been disproportionately impacted by a juvenile justice system that is primarily focused on punishment. For far too long the system has been used to ensnare, house, and surveil black and brown youth. It has set youth on a trajectory of incarceration into adulthood instead of providing them with the services necessary to address adverse childhood experiences and promote economic self-sufficiency. For these youth, and for all youth who are behind bars, enough is enough.

Public Welfare Foundation’s Youth Justice Program supports groups working to advance a fair and effective community-based vision of youth justice, with a focus on ending the criminalization and incarceration of youth of color. In particular, the Program makes grants to groups working to:

• Advance state policy reforms that dramatically restrict youth incarceration, abandon the prison model, and adopt community-based approaches for youth in the juvenile justice system;
• End the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth in the adult criminal justice system; and
• Support innovative strategies to counter structural racism in the juvenile justice system, with a particular focus on front-end reforms.