Over 48,000 youth remain locked up in the US on any given day, some of them even without trial, reveals new report
To those who feel shocked over the fact that the US has an incredibly high jail population and that even expecting mothers do not get adequate care behind bars, here are more reasons to worry.
According to a report in Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), over 48,000 youth in the country are locked up in facilities away from their homes on any given day because of juvenile or criminal justice mechanisms.
The worst part is that thousands of these young inmates have been held even without conducting a trial. Add to that another astonishing fact: the number of youth confinement has fallen by 60 percent since 2000 and the trend shows no signs of slowing down, the PPI report titled 'Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2019' stated.
Why the scenario is so bleak
According to the report, there are failures in the juvenile justice system that also expose the loopholes in the adult system and they are unnecessary pretrial detention, incarceration for the most minor of offenses (19 percent of youth in juvenile facilities are locked up for "technical violations" for probation or parole or for status offenses, PPI adds) and racial disparities (42 percent of boys and 35 percent of girls in America's juvenile facilities are black).
A dramatic fall in number of confined youth
On the question of drastic fall in youth in confinement, the report's author Wendy Sawyer said: "At a time when cutting the adult prison population by 50% strikes many people as radical, states have already cut the number of confined youth by 60% since 2000, and that trend is continuing."
The report cited certain state reforms that have helped in reducing the number of youth in confinement and they include reducing confinement for certain offenses, shutting large detention facilities and limiting the amount of time the youth may be confined or kept under the court's supervision.