That's the title of a new report from the W. Haywood Burns Institute that will be issued Tuesday. Shadi Rahimi writes, "National Leader in Juvenile Justice Poised to Release New Report."
For the families of the more than 90,000 youth in custody of the juvenile justice system any given day, Thanksgiving delivers heartbreak. A majority of incarcerated children in the U.S. are youth of color held for mostly nonviolent offenses. For this, our society pays a high moral and financial price, says James Bell, Executive Director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI) and lead author of its new report on juvenile justice, The Keeper and the Kept.
“As a society we do not demand nor expect excellence, fairness, rationality or accountability from our child-serving justice systems. But there is too much at stake for our democratic principles and our ability to compete in a global knowledge-based world,” Bell says. “As a country, we are not well-served when we have so many uneducated youth of color undeservedly lost in the American juvenile justice apparatus. We can do better. But in order to, we must demand accountability from our juvenile justice systems.”
Systemic problems in juvenile justice are at the forefront of conversation today, particularly regarding juvenile imprisonment for life without parole. On a national level, Black youths are serving life without parole at a rate of about 10 times that of White youths, according to Human Rights Watch. At the same time, the federal Juvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) is overdue for reauthorization and is expected to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The BI, along with the coalition Act4JJ, is pushing for JJDPA reauthorization for reasons including: 1) reducing racial and ethnic disparities in juvenile justice; 2) preventing youth awaiting trial in criminal court from adult lock-up; 3) limiting the time that children who are truant, runaway or violate curfew may be held in juvenile lock-up.
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