Youth Incarceration Declined 75% Between 2000 and 2022
A new report from The Sentencing Project finds an overall decrease in youth offending, but racial and ethnic disparities in youth incarceration and sentencing persist.
Related to: Youth Justice
[Washington, D.C.] – Today, The Sentencing Project released a new report, “Youth Justice By the Numbers” which found that the number of youth held in juvenile justice facilities fell from 108,800 to 27,600 between 2000 – 2022 – a 75% decline.
“Public opinion often misconstrues the realities of youth justice, wrongly assuming that crime is perpetually increasing and that youth offending is routinely violent. This report dispels those myths. The 21st century has seen significant declines in youth arrests and incarceration, and youth offenses tend to be nonviolent ” said Joshua Rovner, Director of Youth Justice with The Sentencing Project and author of the report. “This is a positive development; youth incarceration damages adolescents’ well being on multiple dimensions. There are far more effective alternatives to incarceration that achieve lower recidivism and lead to positive lifetime outcomes. However, we must address the racial and ethnic disparities that persist in the youth justice system.”
The report finds that youth of color are much more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile facilities. In 2021, the white placement rate in juvenile facilities was 49 per 100,000 youth under the juvenile courts’ jurisdiction, while the Black youth placement rate was 228 per 100,000, 4.7 times higher.
There are a number of reasons for the racial disparities in youth incarceration. Black youth are more likely to be arrested than their white peers, are more likely to be detained upon their arrest, and receive harsher sanctions as they move through the criminal legal system.
Additionally, upon arrest, white youth are more likely to be diverted from formal system involvement compared with Black youth. When found delinquent (i.e., convicted in juvenile court), white youth are also more likely to receive probation or informal sanctions, whereas Black youth are more likely to be incarcerated.
The report emphasizes that youth who are diverted out of the court system have better outcomes, and demonstrates the success of these diversionary programs as a model for even more states to reduce the footprint of their justice systems.
The full report is available here. Media interviews with The Sentencing Project are available upon request.
