Diversion
The Sentencing Project released an updated snapshot of youth arrest and incarceration rates, revealing that youth arrest rates have declined 80% from 1996 and youth incarceration declined 75% between 2000 and 2022. Despite these shrinking rates, the juvenile legal system is still marked by significant racial and ethnic disparities. Black youth are 4.7 times more…
By understanding the conditions facing incarcerated youth, the responsibility of the justice system, and strategies designed to improve outcomes, stakeholders can make informed decisions. After arming readers with the historical timeline necessary to understand Texas’ complicated history with its juvenile justice system, LSJA’s Reimagining Reform report issues a challenge to stakeholders during a crucial time…
The National Youth Justice Network released a report detailing legislative trends on youth rights from 2023. This report highlights key gains made by several states around juvenile court fines and fees, expungement, transfer, and youth interrogation among other issues, and flags several regressive legislative trends rooted in harmful narratives about young people. This overview of…
This brief describes how states currently treat two categories of young people: youth who commit status offenses—behaviors that are not categorized as crimes—and young children who do not have the developmental capacity to fully understand the crimes they are committing. Through a 50-state scan of policy and practice, we detail how states respond to these…
A new study by The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that young people assigned to probation after their first offense are more likely to be rearrested in the future, particularly for technical violations, than their peers diverted away from probation. The study, based on data provided by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) and analyzed by…
This report highlights the importance of reducing the juvenile legal system’s reliance on incarceration by calling for systems reform that centers alternative-to-incarceration programs, adolescent development research, and evidence-based approaches. Highlighting successful state and local laws as well as policies and practices from across the country, the report offers examples of reforms like prohibiting the use…
The Annie E. Casey Found. (2023). The Annie E. Casey Foundation undertook a three-year analysis from January 2020 to January 2023 of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on juvenile detention rates. The analysis concluded with three main findings: 1) Black youth were ten times more likely to be detained than white youth in 2023;…
