Easily Overstated

Policymakers, advocates, and even some researchers claim that youth confinement rates across the United States dropped in recent years due to changes in policy and practice. Such claims remain unproven, but voters and elected officials are inclined to accept them as factual because they are offered by reputable agencies and repeated in news media sources. Without reliable evidence, however, the notion that state-level youth confinement rates fall primarily in response to progressive policy reforms is merely appealing rhetoric. Continue reading Easily Overstated

City Limits — Program Keeping Convicted Youths Closer to Home Enjoys Success, Faces Cuts

by Wendy Davis March 2, 2018 City Limits … Just a few years ago, it’s likely that a family court judge would have sent Jim to a facility outside New York City. If so, he could have been as far away as Ithaca, Lansing or other upstate locales hundreds of miles from his family in Brooklyn. That longstanding approach was problematic at best, according to … Continue reading City Limits — Program Keeping Convicted Youths Closer to Home Enjoys Success, Faces Cuts

AP — Wisconsin Juvenile Prisons Struggle to Change Course

by Scott Bauer October 29, 2017 Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Pandora Lobacz was trying to assert control of her classroom at Lincoln Hills youth prison when she ordered an inmate pacing in front of her desk to return to his seat. “You’re not running this classroom. I am,” Lobacz recalls the boy saying, shortly before he punched the 4-foot-7, 110-pound teacher in the … Continue reading AP — Wisconsin Juvenile Prisons Struggle to Change Course