The new century has witnessed a remarkable turnabout in youth justice policy in America. After peaking at over 100,000 youth in custody in 2000, youth incarceration has dropped by more than half and there is a growing movement among activists, formerly incarcerated people, youth correctional leaders, and prosecutors to end the use of youth prisons in favor of community programs and supports for young people who have run afoul of the law. For the few who require custody, states throughout the country have been closing large, distant youth prisons and, in some jurisdictions, replacing them with small, homelike facilities close to home.
In many respects, what has happened and continues to happen with youth justice is what many criminal justice advocates and community organizers have been calling for on behalf of incarcerated adults: the halving of incarceration, realignment of funding to community programs, widespread youth prison closures, and calls for complete deinstitutionalization. This all happened while youth crime has continued to plummet. And, this remarkable decline in youth incarceration started from a moment when there was bi-partisan vilification of young people.
This paper will discuss the remarkable and unexpected decline over the past two decades of youth incarceration. It will summarize research on the negative impact of youth imprisonment, even in its attenuated state, and the implications for the future of the 19th century youth prison model as it faces its possible demise. The paper will also juxtapose youth decarceration with the adult criminal justice system—still squarely mired in mass incarceration—and offer implications for both juvenile and adult justice reform going forward.
