NCJ Number
225573
Date Published
2008
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This paper presents six key challenges raised in the opening essay of the 2008 KIDS COUNT Data Book offering solutions and system reforms to improve outcomes for youth, families, and communities.
Abstract
The six key challenges presented in the opening essay of the 2008 KID COUNT Data Book produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation provide a road map to juvenile justice reform and include: (1) trends in juvenile justice blur or ignore the well-established differences between youth and adults; (2) indiscriminate and wholesale incarceration of juveniles is proving expensive, prone to abuse, and bad for public safety; (3) juvenile justice systems too often ignore the critical role of families in resolving delinquency; (4) the increasing propensity to prosecute minor cases in the juvenile justice system harms youth, with no benefit to public safety; (5) juvenile justice has too often become a dumping ground for youth who should be served by other public systems; and (6) system policies and practices have allowed unequal justice to persist. Following each challenge are key facts and statistical information supporting the challenge and promising solutions which offer more cost-effective, efficient, and just approaches to addressing the six pervasive deficiencies facing the nation’s juvenile justice systems today. Highlights of these solutions include: implementing developmentally appropriate policies, reducing reliance on secure confinement, strengthening and empowering families, increasing reliance on effective community-based services, keeping youth out of the system, and reducing racial disparities. Figures