Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025
By Brian Nam-Sonenstein and Wendy Sawyer
Press Release
August 25, 2025
- Table of Contents
- Demographics and disparities
- Decisions leading to disparities
- Most youth are held in prison- and jail-like facilities
- Juvenile court terminology
- Types of facilities
- Some facility types are much worse than others
- Pretrial detention: Locked up before they're even tried
- Confined for minor offenses
- Progress toward decarceration of the juvenile legal system
- Conclusions
- Appendix
- Footnotes
- Read about the data
- Demographics and disparities
- Most youth are held in prison- and jail-like facilities
- Some facility types are much worse than others
- Pretrial detention: Locked up before they're even tried
- Confined for minor offenses
- Progress toward decarceration of the juvenile legal system
- Conclusions
- Appendix
- A note about language use in this report
- Footnotes
- Read about the data
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In the past 25 years, the number of youth confined in facilities away from home as a result of juvenile or criminal legal system involvement has dropped by over 70%, to about 31,900 at last count in 2023. In the criminal legal system context, this is an unparalleled rate of decarceration. But while the juvenile system’s shift from carceral punishment to more community-based responses to law- and rule-breaking behavior offers lessons for the broader criminal legal system, our analysis of the most recent data shows this work is far from complete.
Tens of thousands of children and adolescents are still held under lock and key each day, most in restrictive facilities that look and feel a lot like adult prisons and jails. In fact, the U.S. still confines youth at a rate that’s more than twice the global average, and well above that of all other NATO member countries.1 Many are detained before even having a trial or are accused of only low-level charges. By our estimation, nearly 45% of youth in confinement could likely be safely released today.
To make matters worse, some jurisdictions seem determined to drive youth confinement even higher, abandoning successful juvenile legal system reforms and returning to 1990s-style tough-on-youth-crime approaches. As politically lucrative as such moves may be, they fly in the face of what we know about youth development and intervention. They also risk repeating the same failed policies that have placed millions of kids and adults behind bars and under supervision. Considering that nearly 7 out of every 10 adults in state prison were first arrested before the age of 19, increased criminalization of youth serves as a bad omen for a wave of adult criminalization in the not-so-distant future.
What explains the remarkable decline in youth confinement over the last 25 years? How are the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems different, and how are they similar? Perhaps most importantly, can people working to reduce the number of adults behind bars learn any lessons from the progress made in reducing youth confinement?
This report answers these questions, beginning with a snapshot of how many system-involved youth are confined, where they are held, under what conditions, and for what offenses. It offers a starting point for people new to the issue to consider the ways that the problems of the criminal legal system are mirrored in the juvenile system: from racial disparities and disgraceful living conditions, to the aggressive and harmful use of pretrial detention and overcriminalization. While acknowledging the philosophical, cultural, and procedural differences between the adult and juvenile legal systems,2 this report highlights these issues as areas ripe for reform for youth as well as adults.
This updated and expanded version of our Youth Pie report, last published in 2019, also examines the dramatic reduction in the confined youth population, and offers insights and recommendations for advocates and policymakers working to shrink the adult criminal legal system. There have been several notable changes to the system since our last report, which included data from 2017. As of 2023, the most recent year for which data are available:
- There are far fewer kids in juvenile confinement facilities, and far fewer facilities — especially large facilities that hold over 100 kids;
- Racial disparities have worsened, particularly among Black and Indigenous children;
- Greater proportions of kids are held in more restrictive youth jails and prisons;
- Greater proportions of kids are held for longer periods of time;
- Greater proportions of kids are awaiting hearings and disposition (sentencing);
- And a greater proportion of kids in confinement are held in long-term facilities and for violent offenses.
Demographics and disparities among confined youth
Generally speaking, state juvenile legal systems handle cases involving defendants under the age of 18.3 (This is not a hard-and-fast rule, however; every state makes exceptions for younger people to be prosecuted as adults in some situations or for certain offenses.4) Of the 29,300 youth in juvenile facilities, more than two-thirds (68%) are aged 16 or older. Troublingly, about 400 confined children are no more than 12 years old.5
Gender. The vast majority (85%) of confined youth are boys,6 but girls make up a greater proportion of the youngest kids in the system: 45% of girls in confinement are under 16 compared to 30% of boys. Below age 13, these differences grow even starker, as nearly 1 in 10 girls in the system are younger than 13, compared to nearly 1 in 20 boys.
Race and ethnicity. Black and Indigenous youth are overrepresented in juvenile facilities, while white youth are underrepresented.7 These racial disparities8 are particularly pronounced among both Black boys and Black girls, and while Indigenous girls make up a small part of the confined population, they are extremely overrepresented relative to their share of the total youth population. While 14% of all youth under 18 in the U.S. are Black, 47% of boys and 39% of girls in juvenile facilities are Black — a level of disparity that has actually worsened in recent years.9 In some jurisdictions, Black children make up more than 60% of the confined youth population.10 And even excluding youth held in Indian country facilities, Indigenous children make up 3% of girls and 2% of boys in juvenile facilities, despite comprising less than 1% of all youth nationally.11
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Decisions leading to disparities
Some of these disparities can be traced back to differences in how cases are handled for kids of different races and ethnicities. As is the case with Black adults, Black children are particularly targeted with overcharging and harsher treatment, making them far more likely to be incarcerated than white children. Black children, and especially Black girls, are also subject to an added burden of adultification: when a child is perceived as older, more culpable, and more responsible than their peers. Similar to the racist “super predator” myth that was used to rationalize harsh punishments in the 1990s by portraying Black youth as more violent and unruly than their white peers, adultification leads to harsher consequences within the juvenile legal system.
More specifically, Indigenous children of all ages — but especially those aged 13 and younger — and Black children were more likely than white children to have their cases handled formally rather than informally in 2022 (the most recent year for which case data are available).12 The decision about how to handle a child’s case in the juvenile legal system is a crucial one: they can be petitioned (“formally handled”) which involves a formal request for a juvenile court to adjudicate the case or to prosecute the child in criminal court, or they can be nonpetitioned (“informally handled”). This approach involves a judge, referees, probation officers, or other court officers screening youth for intervention outside of court. Informal handling more often leads to less severe case outcomes, including dismissal, fines, community service, restitution, or services outside of court supervision.13
Racial disparities are also evident in decisions to transfer youth from juvenile to adult court. In 2022, Black youth made up 37% of delinquency cases, but well over half (59%) of all youth judicially transferred from juvenile court to adult court. Meanwhile, white youth accounted for 43% of all delinquency cases, but made up only 26% of judicial transfers to adult court. And although the total number of youth judicially transferred in 2022 was less than half what it was in 2005, the racial disproportionality among these transfers has actually worsened over time.14 Reports also show that in Florida, prosecutors send Black boys to adult court via “direct file” at seven times the rate of white or Latino boys, and that Indigenous youth are 1.8 times more likely than white youth to receive an adult prison sentence.
Ultimately, as is the case in the adult criminal legal system, the racially disproportionate confinement of children starts with policing, not criminality. The Sentencing Project notes that white youth and youth of color have similar patterns of offending when it comes to weapons possession, alcohol and other drug use, and fighting. The difference is that Black and brown kids “encounter police more often than their white peers and are disproportionately arrested.” Longstanding and intensifying racial disparities reflect police practices and politicians’ policy choices “to criminalize adolescence rather than adolescents’ criminal behaviors, particularly when the adolescents were Black or brown.” In other words, Black and brown kids are not a growing segment of the confined youth population because they have a greater propensity toward lawbreaking, but because they are targeted for surveillance, arrest, and punishment in ways that white kids are not.
Most youth are held in prison- and jail-like facilities
System-involved youth are held in a number of different types of facilities. (See “types of facilities” sidebar.) Some facilities look a lot like prisons, some are prisons, and others offer youth more freedom and services. For many youth, “residential placement” in juvenile facilities is virtually indistinguishable from incarceration.
Most youth in juvenile facilities19 experience distinctly carceral conditions, in facilities that are locked and long-term. Almost all (96%) youth in juvenile out-of-home placement are in locked facilities — a greater share of youth than were locked-in in 2017 (92%). According to a recent report, 61% of long-term secure facilities, 38% of detention centers, and 52% of reception/diagnostic centers also use “mechanical restraints” like handcuffs, leg cuffs, restraining chairs, strait jackets, etc. Fifty-two percent of reception/diagnostic centers, 47% percent of long-term secure facilities and 37% of detention centers isolate youth in locked rooms for four hours or more. Meanwhile, two-thirds (67%) of youth are held for longer than a month; about a quarter (24%) are held over 6 months; around 2,700 youth (9%) are held for over a year.20 Disturbingly, 88 kids that were locked up for over a year were only 13 or younger at the time of their admission.
In our last Youth Pie report, we noted that larger facilities (with more than 50 beds) held the greatest share of youth in confinement in 2017.21 In 2023, these proportions have changed considerably: 43% are in facilities of over 50 youth, with only 2% in the largest youth prisons, which hold more than 200 (this is down from 11% in 2017). These larger facilities are often very old and brutal in their treatment of children, with razorwire fences, locked doors, solitary confinement, routine a lack of food and hygiene products, and staff practices such as the use of chemical restraints, wrap restraints, and hogtying. Additionally, they’re often located in remote rural areas far from home.
Fortunately, a closer look at the changes in the kinds of facilities holding youth over the past two decades shows a clear shift away from the largest facilities in favor of smaller ones. In 2000, there were 264 youth prisons with over 100 beds; by 2022, there were just 42. The number of youth held in these facilities fell by about 90% over that same time, accounting for most of the overall drop in confined youth. Meanwhile, smaller facilities with 20 or fewer beds had the smallest population declines. While the trend away from large youth prisons is encouraging, it is far from complete: in 2023, nearly 6,000 youth were still held in facilities with more than 100 beds.
Nearly four out of every five confined youth (78%) are held in the most restrictive facilities — in youth jails and prisons or in adult jails and prisons. Unfortunately, the proportion of youth held in the most restrictive settings has grown since our last report.22 The most recent data show 2,437 confined youth — about 1 in 13 — are incarcerated in adult jails and prisons, where they face greater safety risks and fewer age-appropriate services are available to them.23 24 At least another 22,361 are held in the three types of juvenile facilities that are best described as prison- and jail-like correctional facilities: (1) detention centers, (2) long-term secure facilities, and (3) reception/diagnostic centers.25 Almost all (99.8%) youth confined in these three types of correctional facilities are “restricted by locked doors, gates, or fences”26 rather than staff-secure.27 It’s important to note that racial disparities appear to be especially acute in these harsher facilities, particularly for Black and Indigenous youth: the proportion of Black children in these facilities is roughly 3.5 times higher than their share of the general population, and the share of Indigenous children is roughly twice their share of the population.
Detention centers. The largest share of confined youth are held in detention centers. These are the functional equivalents of jails in the adult criminal legal system. Like jails, they are typically operated by local authorities, and are used for the temporary restrictive custody of defendants awaiting a hearing or disposition (sentence). Over 82% of youth in detention centers fall into those two categories — an increase of about 20% since 2017.28 In other words, a larger percentage of kids in youth jails were awaiting a hearing or disposition (sentence) — rather than actually found guilty and serving a sentence — than there were before.
But how many of the nearly 13,500 children and teenagers in juvenile detention centers should really be there? According to federal guidance, “…the purpose of juvenile detention is to confine only those youth who are serious, violent, or chronic offenders… pending legal action. Based on these criteria, [it] is not considered appropriate for status offenders and youth that commit technical violations of probation.” Yet almost 3,000 youth are held in detention centers for these same low-level offenses. And nearly 2,000 more have been sentenced to serve time there for other offenses, even though detention centers offer fewer programs and services than other facilities. In fact, “National leaders in juvenile justice… support the prohibition of juvenile detention as a dispositional option.”
Long-term secure facilities. The most common placement for committed (sentenced) youth is in long-term secure facilities, where the conditions of confinement invite comparisons to prisons. Often called “training schools,” these are typically the largest and oldest facilities, sometimes holding hundreds of youth behind razor wire fences, where they may be subjected to pepper spray, mechanical restraints, and solitary confinement.29 Despite their likeness to prisons, these facilities hold considerable numbers of very young children: around 15% of kids aged 13 and under are held in long-term secure facilities.
Reception/diagnostic centers. The third prison-like facility type, reception/diagnostic centers, are often located adjacent to long-term facilities; here, staff evaluate youth committed by the courts and assign them to correctional facilities. Like detention centers, these are meant to be transitional placements, yet 72% of the youth they hold are there longer than 90 days. Nearly three in ten youth in these “temporary” facilities are held there for over a year. And again, in 2023, these facilities held a larger share of kids for longer periods of time than they did in 2017.30
Residential-style facilities. Outside of youth jails and prisons, another 6,953 youth are in more “residential” style facilities that are ostensibly less restrictive, but vary tremendously, ranging from remote, stringent wilderness camps to group homes where youth may leave to attend school or go to work. Most of these youth (82%) are still in locked facilities rather than staff-secured, and conditions in some of these settings are reportedly worse than youth prisons.31 Almost nine out of ten youth in these more “residential” facilities are in residential treatment facilities — which a 2024 U.S. Senate report describes as “warehouses of neglect” — or group homes. Less frequently, youth are held in ranch or wilderness camps or shelters.
Private facilities. Overall, around one in five kids confined in the juvenile legal system are held in privately-operated facilities. In particular, more than half of kids in shelters, group homes, and residential treatment facilities are in private facilities. These facilities also tend to hold a greater proportion of girls (24%) than boys (18%).
Some facility types are much worse than others
The type of facility where a child is confined can affect their health, safety, access to services, and outcomes upon reentry. Adult prisons and jails are unquestionably the worst places for youth. They are not designed to provide age-appropriate services for children and teens, and according to the Campaign for Youth Justice,32 youth in adult facilities may be placed in solitary confinement to comply with the PREA safety standard of “sight and sound” separation from incarcerated adults. Youth in adult facilities are also five times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.
Juvenile detention centers (or “youth jails”) and long-term secure “youth prisons” are often very harmful environments, too. In the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement, more youth in detention and corrections programs reported sexual victimization, fear of attack, solitary confinement, strip searches, use of restraints, unnecessary use of force, and poor relations with staff. Youth jails and prisons also tend to be larger, and youth in larger facilities (with more than 25 beds) report higher rates of sexual victimization. Youth in detention centers, in particular, report receiving the fewest education services, such as special education, GED preparation, and job training. These youth are also most likely to report difficulty sleeping because of light, indicating that, like many adult facilities, the lights are left on even at night. For a youth population that typically come with a history of trauma and victimization, confinement under any conditions leads to worse outcomes, but the punitive youth jails and prisons facilities are especially dehumanizing.
Pretrial detention: Locked up before they’re even tried
To be sure, many system-involved youth are found guilty of serious offenses and could conceivably pose a risk in the community. But pretrial detention is surprisingly common; judges choose to detain youth in a quarter (25%) of delinquency cases, resulting in a disturbing number of youth in juvenile facilities who are not even serving a sentence.
Nearly 9,000 youth in juvenile facilities — or three in ten — haven’t even been found guilty or delinquent, and are locked up before a hearing (awaiting trial). Another 4,400 are detained awaiting disposition (sentencing) or placement. Most youth detained pretrial are held in detention centers, but nearly 2,000 are locked in long-term secure facilities — youth prisons — without even having been committed. Compared to data from 2017, this represents a considerable rise in the number of kids detained pretrial in long-term facilities.33 Of those in detention, just over half are accused of violent offenses.34 While a small number of youth do commit violence so severe that temporary incapacitation may be justified, holding kids in such deplorable conditions for long periods of time puts them at serious risk of physical and mental harm, and is counterproductive to public safety in the short and long term. Whenever possible, youth can and should be offered opportunities to take accountability safely in their homes and communities instead of being removed from them.
Still, over 2,000 youth are detained pretrial for “behaviors that are not law violations for adults”35 — more specifically, technical violations of probation or parole, or for status offenses. A handful of states are driving pretrial detention for such exceedingly minor offenses: only eight states are responsible for detaining 64% of all kids held pretrial for technical violations,36 and ten states are responsible for detaining 61% of all kids held pretrial for status offenses.37
Once again mirroring the adult criminal legal system, youth pretrial detention is marred by racial disparity. Only 18% of white youth with delinquency cases are detained, compared to 30% of Hispanic youth, 29% of Black youth, 23% of Indigenous youth, and 27% of Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander youth. Time held pretrial isolates youth from their families and communities and exposes them to the risk of victimization while detained. Yet in 2023, more than half of youth detained pretrial had been held for longer than 30 days, and nearly 700 had already been detained for over a year.38 Those 700 held pretrial account for over , one-quarter of all youth held for a year or more.
Finally, youth that are transferred to the adult system can be subject to pretrial detention if their family or friends cannot afford bail. As a result, they may be jailed in adult facilities for weeks or months without even being convicted.
Confined for minor offenses
Far from locking up youth only as a last resort, the juvenile legal system confines large numbers of children and teenagers for the lowest-level offenses. For nearly one in seven youth in juvenile facilities, the most serious charge leveled against them is a technical violation of supervision (11%) or a status offense (3%).39 These are behaviors that would not warrant confinement except for their status on probation or as minors.
Over 4,000 children and teenagers are confined for these two especially low-level offense categories, including 750 locked in long-term secure youth prisons. Younger children and girls in particular are ensnared by the system for these relatively minor infractions. For kids aged 14 and under, technical violations and status offenses make up a larger share of their offenses (19%) than for kids aged 15 and older (13%). And confined girls are twice as likely (24%) as confined boys (12%) to be in out-of-home placement for these low-level offenses.
These are youth who are locked up for not reporting to their probation officers, for failing to complete community service or follow through with referrals — or for truancy, running away, violating curfew, or being otherwise “ungovernable.”40 Some of this is driven by the degree to which kids are put on probation in the first place: one-third (34%) of juvenile court cases in 2022 ended in probation, making it the most common juvenile case disposition other than dismissal (also 34%).41 And although probation might seem like a more lenient approach than incarceration, such forms of supervision often come with restrictive conditions that set kids up to fail just like they do in the adult system.
Children in different states face very different odds of out-of-home placement for the lowest-level offenses. Our analysis found that a relatively small group of states — led by Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Texas — are driving youth confinement for technical violations and status offenses:
- Four states are responsible for nearly 60% of all kids confined for “incorrigibility,”42
- Five states are responsible for just over 50% of all kids confined for running away,43
- Six states are responsible for 53% of all kids confined for truancy,44 and
- Two states are responsible for half of all kids confined for underage drinking.45
When such minor cases lead to confinement, they can result in long stays or placement in the most restrictive environments. The vast majority of kids held for technical violations and status offenses are held in locked facilities (94% and 84% respectively). Just over one-third (35%) of youth held for status offenses are held for more than 90 days, and a similar proportion (32%) are held in prison or jail-style youth facilities.
Progress toward decarceration of the juvenile legal system
The fact that nearly 32,000 youth are confined today — often for low-level offenses or before they’ve had a hearing — signals that reforms are still badly needed in the juvenile legal system. Yet some jurisdictions appear to be doubling down on failed policies, and in doing so threaten to reverse the decarceration trend of the past two decades:
- The state’s attorney for Baltimore recently called for the juvenile system to mirror the punitive nature of the adult system more, not less, calling for “public safety” to take more precedence over services offered to youth.
- New York City’s mayor, the Bronx district attorney, and the NYPD commissioner recently joined forces to criticize the “raise the age” law for preventing some youth from being funneled into the adult system; and
- Local officials in Texas and Birmingham, Alabama are pushing to impose or reinstate curfews for teens, which would put more youth at risk of arrest and/or confinement for status offenses.
Confinement remains a punishing, and often traumatizing, experience for youth who typically already have a history of trauma and victimization. Without discounting the many ongoing problems discussed in this report, however, there is another, more positive story about juvenile legal system reform.
Policymakers focused on the juvenile legal system have responded far more rationally to the falling crime rate and to the mounting evidence of “what works” compared to those working on the adult criminal legal system. At a time when a 50% reduction in the adult prison and jail population over 10 or 15 years still seems radical to many, the juvenile system has already cut the number of confined youth by 73% since 2000. The number of youth in adult prisons and jails has also dropped by almost 80% since 2000, and 47% since our last report.47 From 2000 to 2022, nearly 1,800 juvenile facilities (58%) closed,47 including nearly 85% of the largest facilities.48 From an adult criminal legal system reform perspective, this is enviable progress.
Prior to the pandemic, the juvenile legal system was decarcerating at a rate of roughly 5% year over year. This trend accelerated in 2020, as courts experienced pandemic-related disruptions to normal operations; by 2021, the number of youth in juvenile facilities had dropped by 11,600, or 32% of what it was in 2019. Starting in 2022, however, the system has quickly rebounded to 80% of its 2019 size. While the confined youth population remains well below pre-pandemic levels, its upward trend nonetheless signals a need for vigilance against continued growth, particularly given the resurgence of past failed policies.
The progress toward decarceration in the juvenile system can’t be attributed to any single change; rather, historical factors, ongoing research, and dogged advocacy efforts all played important roles. Youth crime rates dropped. Some of the most egregious conditions of confinement were widely publicized, jolting policymakers to action. Adolescent brain research made it impossible to deem youth fully culpable and incapable of change. Evidence piled up showing that confinement leads to worse outcomes.
Much of the progress can be attributed to the work of advocates who pushed for federal legislation to protect confined youth (especially PREA and the JJDPA), and for state laws that “raised the age” of juvenile court jurisdiction, discouraged transfers to adult courts, and allowed for more individualized sentencing. Many of these strategies have parallels in the criminal legal system reform movement, such as repealing mandatory minimum sentences, while others, like “raise the age,” don’t really apply. But juvenile legal system reform advocates have also had success with strategies to both improve conditions and reduce the use of confinement that the broader criminal legal system reform movement can adopt.
An inexhaustive list of successful reform strategies that have been used to decarcerate the juvenile legal system, and that could be be adapted and applied to the adult criminal legal system, includes:
- Closing and repurposing prisons and detention centers, and redirecting resources to serve people in their communities: No form of confinement is without harms, and pursuing smaller facilities with more rehabilitative approaches over large, punitive youth prisons (as has been done in Missouri) would represent an improvement over the status quo. However, closing facilities also presents opportunities to break out of the cycle of youth incarceration altogether by thoughtfully repurposing them, redirecting funds spent on youth and adult incarceration to social capital and local infrastructure, like quality schools, community centers, and healthcare facilities. Texas, for example, repurposed the Dawson State Jail as a nonprofit office and community space. As the Sentencing Project notes, such repurposing is currently the exception, not the norm, as youth facilities are often transferred into the adult system rather than taking carceral capacity completely offline, which is why they urge jurisdictions to prioritize community reinvestment and prioritize approaches that employ decarceration and non-correctional uses.
- Developing programs to safely serve people charged with violent offenses in their homes and communities: While efforts to reduce adult prison and jail populations generally exclude people charged with violent offenses, juvenile legal system experts have pushed for “no reject policies,” recognizing that home- and community-based interventions are more effective than incarceration for youth charged with all kinds of offenses. The field has developed evidence-based programs that reduce violence and delinquent, criminal, and aggressive behavior among youth with “elevated risk levels” — without confinement. Criminal legal system reform advocates have begun to recognize the need for new approaches to violence, and can look to these programs as models for supportive, non-carceral alternatives.
- Changing laws to make certain offenses “non-jailable”: In the context of the juvenile legal system, states like Utah and Massachusetts have removed status offenses from juvenile court jurisdiction, and federal legislation (the JJDPA) mandates the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. (The JJDPA makes an exception for youth who have violated a valid court order, but several states have passed laws to counteract that exception.) A number of states have also ended commitment to secure juvenile facilities for low-level or nonviolent offenses.
- Restricting supervision to only the most necessary cases, and reorienting supervision conditions around positive reinforcement: As noted by the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center, Washington State developed a pilot project to make probation conditions more developmentally appropriate and realistically achievable for youth placed under supervision. Reorienting supervision conditions around positive reinforcement versus punishment can promote success for people on supervision rather than set them up to fail.
- Issuing civil citations in lieu of arrest to divert people away from court intervention: Delaware’s Juvenile Civil Citation program and Florida’s Prearrest Delinquency Citation program are examples of two statewide efforts to offer youth accused of misdemeanors alternative, community-based sanctions, such as family counseling and treatment for substance abuse or mental health, and restorative measures such as community service, apology letters, community impact statements, restitution, etc. While cite-and-release programs are common in the adult criminal legal system, they generally serve to prevent jail detention, not prosecution. These youth programs, however, allow youth to avoid prosecution and its consequences altogether. From June 2024 to May 2025, nearly 10,000 (or 64%) of eligible youth in Florida avoided formal prosecution through pre-arrest diversion.
- Capping sentences to reduce time under correctional supervision: Kentucky, Utah, and Tennessee have set limits on the amount of time youth can be in an out-of-home placement, on probation, and/or under court supervision, and Georgia reduced maximum sentences for certain felonies from 5 years to 18 months. Such limits are rare in the adult system, where, for example, indeterminate sentences are the norm and long probation sentences often lead to further supervision or incarceration — but California’s cap on probation sentences (AB 1950)49 stands out as one example of this strategy applied in the adult system.
- Shifting funding to develop and expand community-based alternatives to incarceration: Equally as important as decarcerating is the shifting of funding and resources from confinement to the community. The LiberateMKE campaign, for example, reduced Milwaukee’s police budget by $900,000 in 2020 while increasing funding for “summer jobs for young people, affordable quality housing, and non-police violence prevention.” And in 2023, Washington State provided counties with more than $10 million to support evidence-based therapy, education, and employment programs in the community, geared toward youth at high or moderate risk to reoffend. This “justice reinvestment” model has been implemented in many states’ adult systems as well, but these examples show the value in focusing on “front end” reforms to reduce overall incarceration.
- Recognizing and addressing the impact of trauma on system-involved populations: An estimated 90% of system-involved youth have experienced serious trauma in their lifetime. Understanding the impact of trauma on cognitive development and behavior, policymakers and practitioners have increasingly called for trauma-informed care — not punishment — for system-involved youth. Yet although incarcerated adults also typically have a history of traumatic victimization, recognition of past trauma has yet to inform sentencing and treatment for most system-involved adults. Making policymakers and the public more aware of the link between victimization and legal system involvement could help shift political winds to take a less punitive, and more supportive, approach.
Conclusions
This “big picture” report not only reveals ways in which the juvenile legal system must improve, but also offers lessons from progress that has already been made. States have reduced the number of youth in confinement by more than half without seeing an increase in crime — a victory that should embolden policymakers to reduce incarceration further, for youth and adults alike.
By our most conservative estimates, states could release at least 14,200 more youth today without great risk to public safety. These include almost 800 youth held for status offenses, around 750 held for drug offenses other than trafficking, nearly 2,000 held for public order offenses not involving weapons, and around 3,300 held for technical violations.50 States should also look more closely at youth detained pretrial. Beyond youth detained for those low-level offense categories, around 7,30051 others are held before they’ve been found guilty or delinquent; many, if not all, of these youth would be better served in the community.
Beyond releasing and resentencing youth, states should remove all youth from adult jails and prisons, close large juvenile facilities, and invest in non-residential community-based programs.52 Legislators should continue to update laws to reflect our current understanding of brain development and criminal behavior over the life course, such as raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction and ending the prosecution of youth as adults.53
But lawmakers who support reducing incarceration among youth should also consider supporting radical reforms to the adult criminal legal system. Like youth confinement,54 adult incarceration inflicts lasting physical, mental, and economic harm on individuals and families. And falling rates of both youth crime and youth incarceration provide evidence that bold reforms — such as making more offenses “non-jailable” and expanding community-based alternatives to incarceration — could be applied to the adult system while maintaining public safety.
Like the criminal and juvenile legal systems themselves, the efforts to reverse mass incarceration for adults and to deinstitutionalize system-involved youth have remained curiously distinct. But the two systems have more problems — and potentially, more solutions — in common than one might think. The momentum of decarceration in the juvenile legal system must continue, and it should inspire bolder reforms in the criminal legal system as well.
Appendix
- Data table: Most serious offense by state and status
A note about language used in this report
Many terms related to the juvenile legal system are contentious. We have elected to refer to people younger than 18 as “youth” and avoid the stigmatizing term “juvenile” except where it is a term of art (“juvenile legal system”), a legal distinction (“tried as juveniles”), or the most widely-used term (“juvenile facilities”). We also chose to use the terms “confinement” and “incarceration” to describe residential placement, because we concluded that these were appropriate terms for the conditions under which most youth are held (although we recognize that facilities vary in terms of restrictiveness). Additionally, the racial and ethnic terms used to describe the demographic characteristics of confined youth (e.g. “Indigenous”) reflect the language used in the data sources.
We also note that we use “correctional” and “residential-style” facilities to group together and differentiate between a wide range of facility types. However, “correctional” facilities should be understood to be youth jails and youth prisons. We chose this language not to downplay the conditions of confinement facing youth, but simply as a classification tool when comparing facility types and the experiences one might have within them.
Finally, because this report is directed at people more familiar with the criminal legal system than the juvenile legal system, we occasionally made some language choices to make the transition to juvenile legal processes easier. For example, we use the familiar term “pretrial detention” to refer to the detention of youth awaiting adjudicatory hearings, which are not generally called trials.
Footnotes
The United States confines kids at a rate of 26 per 100,000 kids aged 5-17, compared to a global average of 15 per 100,000 kids of the same age. ↩
A full explanation of the juvenile legal process is beyond the scope of this report. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention offers a concise overview and diagram of the Juvenile Justice System Structure & Process. Prof. Michele Deitch authored a more comprehensive overview of the history, standards, legislation, and contemporary issues related to the juvenile legal system in Ch. 1 of the National Institute of Corrections’ “Desktop Guide to Quality Practice for Working with Youth in Confinement“ (2014). ↩
Each state decides what age limits and statutes fall under the jurisdiction of their juvenile legal system and who can be prosecuted within the criminal legal system. Currently, four states continue to automatically prosecute 17-year-olds as adults — Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Wisconsin. North Carolina raised the age in 2019, but backpedaled in 2024 to automatically transfer 16 and 17 year olds accused of most classes of felonies to adult court. Additionally, some states also define the lower bounds of the juvenile legal system; in North Carolina, for example, children as young as 6 can be adjudicated in the juvenile legal system. ↩
In 2019, 22 states and the District of Columbia had at least one provision that allowed youth to be prosecuted as adults with no specified minimum age. In the states that specified a minimum age for transferring youth to criminal court, the youngest children that could be transferred were 10 years old (in Iowa and Wisconsin). ↩
These young children are sometimes confined for long periods of time. At the time of the survey, about 6% of children 12 or younger had been held for more than 6 months; 3 of them had already been held for over a year. ↩
These gender disparities are more pronounced in some places than others: 10 jurisdictions — South Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Hawaii, Indiana, Connecticut, Alabama, Idaho, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. — have confined populations that are over 20% girls, compared to around 15% nationally. ↩
Kids with disabilities — and especially youth of color with disabilities— are also disproportionately locked up in juvenile facilities. Alarmingly, confined neurodivergent youth of color experience 120% higher odds of reporting being assaulted by staff than their white, neurotypical peers. ↩
For years, the W. Haywood Burns Institute has provided detailed data analysis of racial disparities in youth incarceration, including by state. For an analysis of the widening racial disparities observed since 2020, see the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2023 report Changing Course in Youth Detention: Reversing Widening Gaps by Race and Place. For a concise overview of the history and research on racial disparities among system-involved youth, see Teen Vogue’s 2018 article, The Criminal Justice System Discriminates Against Children of Color. Data on the U.S. youth population by race and ethnicity for a given year can be found at The Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Center. ↩
Our last Youth Pie report noted that a smaller proportion of confined children in 2017 — 42% of boys and 35% of girls — were Black than were confined in 2023. ↩
In 11 jurisdictions — Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — over 60% of the confined youth population is Black, despite Black children making up only 14% of the youth population nationally. ↩
Girls are also represented more in Indian country facilities than they are in all other juvenile facilities; girls make up 38% of all youth in Indian country facilities, compared to 15% of all youth in all other juvenile facilities. ↩
Forty-two percent of white kids aged 13 and under had their cases handled formally and 58% informally, 52% of Indigenous kids of the same age had cases handled formally and only 48% informally. Overall, for Black and Indigenous kids of all ages, 59% of cases were handled formally, compared to 48% of cases involving white kids. ↩
In 2022, only 27% of formally-handled cases were dismissed, and only 6% were labeled as having a disposition (sentence) of “Other” (meaning they ended in fines, restitution, community services, or referrals outside the court for services with minimal or no further court involvement anticipated). Compare that to informally-handled cases, 85% of which ended with dismissal (42%) or an “Other” disposition (43%). Additionally, zero informally-handled cases ended in confinement or were waived to adult court, while 38,213 formally-handled cases ended in placement and another 2,965 were waived to adult court. ↩
In 2005, the same data source shows that white youth made up 48% of all delinquency cases and 45% of cases waived to adult court, while Black youth made up 33% of all cases and 39% of cases transferred to adult court. ↩
Technically, the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement records facility self-classifications across nine categories (Detention Center, Shelter, Reception/Diagnostic Center, Group Home, Boot Camp, Ranch/Wilderness Camp, Residential Treatment Center, Long-term Secure Facility, and Other). However, since the data reflect no youth in Boot Camps in 2023, we have omitted this category from the analysis. ↩
According to 18 U.S.C. S 1151, “Indian country” refers to “(a) all land within the limits of any Indian reservation… (b) all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States… and (c) all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished….” ↩
Some details are available in “Jails in Indian Country, 2023,” including a list of facilities by state, the number of youth 17 or younger held in each by gender, rated capacity of each facility, offense data, and conviction status. Unfortunately, youth in Indian country facilities cannot be compared to those in other juvenile facilities by age or offense type (these are reported differently than in the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement), and data on security type (locked versus staff-secured) and length of stay are not reported for Indian country facilities. ↩
In 2022, 412 youth in adult prisons were incarcerated in state prisons. Twenty-five youth aged 17 or younger were under the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) jurisdiction; they were housed in unspecified private facilities contracted by the BOP. ↩
This does not include youth in Indian country facilities, as not all of these details are available in the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ report, “Jails in Indian Country, 2023.” ↩
These time frames were measures of “days since admission” at the time of the survey, so they actually measure how long youth had already been held, not a disposition (sentence) length. These time frames are therefore not necessarily reflective of how long surveyed youth were ultimately confined. ↩
Around 4 out of 5 kids were confined in facilities of more than 20 kids, over half were in facilities of more than 50 kids, and 1 in 10 were in facilities holding over 200 kids. ↩
By comparison, we noted that 65% of youth were held in the most restrictive facilities in our last Youth Pie report covering data from 2017. ↩
According to federal legislation (the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, or JJDPA, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA), youth charged as adults should be put in juvenile residential placement, not in adult facilities, unless a judge determines after a hearing that they cannot be put in placement. When they are held in adult facilities, they must be housed separately and protected from physical and “sight and sound” contact with adults. When youth and adults come into contact in these facilities, it should only be under direct staff supervision. Furthermore, facilities should avoid putting youth in isolation to comply with these standards. State compliance with JJDPA and with PREA’s “Youthful Inmates Standard” varies, however. ↩
While the Campaign for Youth Justice is no longer an active campaign or organization, its work to end the confinement of youth in adult facilities is still among the best-researched and relevant today. It details many of the problems with incarcerating youth in these facilities in its fact sheets Key Facts: Youth in the Justice System and Let’s Get Children Out of Adult Courts, Jails & Prisons. In 2016, The Atlantic reported, in greater depth, the risks of sexual abuse and violence to youth in adult facilities. More recently, Human Rights Watch published an analysis of New Jersey’s system of prosecuting youth as adults, including differences in the justice process and outcomes. ↩
The 22,361 youth in detention centers, long-term secure facilities, and reception/diagnostic centers discussed in this section do not include those in similar facilities in Indian country. While most of the Indian country facilities holding youth aged 17 or younger have “Juvenile Detention” or “Detention Center” in their names, “Jails in Indian Country, 2023” does not provide comparable facility details to those in the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement. ↩
The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement states that “locks indicated” means “[the] facility indicated that juveniles are restricted within the facility or its grounds by locked doors, gates, or fences some or all of the time.” ↩
According to the EZACJRP Glossary, “facilities that do not rely on locks for security are also known as staff secure.” ↩
Of the 13,477 youth in detention centers in 2023, 7,834 (58%) were detained before adjudication/conviction or disposition/sentencing. Another 2,179 (16%) were committed after adjudication or criminal conviction. The remaining 1,865 (14%) were either detained awaiting placement, placed there as part of a diversion arrangement, or were held for “other/unknown” reasons. ↩
For more on “youth prisons,” see Youth First Initiative’s website; The Facts Report has more detailed descriptions comparing youth prisons to adult prisons. For more on conditions of confinement in juvenile facilities, see Survey of Youth in Residential Placement: Conditions of Confinement by Andrea J. Sedlak, Ph.D. (May 2017). Note that the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement data are from 2003; the survey has only been conducted once so more recent data are not available. ↩
In 2017, over half of kids held in reception/diagnostic centers were held for 90 days or more, and nearly 1 in 7 were held for over a year. By 2023, 72% of kids in these facilities were held for 90 days or more, and more than 1 in 4 were held for over a year. ↩
While there were significantly fewer kids held in these “residential” style facilities in 2023 than there were in 2017, a larger percentage were locked in these facilities than in our last report. ↩
While the Campaign for Youth Justice is no longer an active campaign or organization, its work to end the confinement of youth in adult facilities, including by reforming transfer laws, is still among the best-researched and relevant today. We have included archived links to some of its resources throughout this report. ↩
The number of kids held in-long term facilities nearly doubled between 2017 and 2023, rising from 986 to 1,820. ↩
Of the 1,820 youth detained in long-term facilities, 987 are held for person (violent) offenses, 281 are held for property offenses, and 552 are held for technical violations, drug, public order, and status offenses. Compared to 2017, this represents an 84% increase in the number of youth detained in long term facilities, a 124% increase in the number of youth detained for person (violent offenses), a 50% increase in the number of youth detained for property offenses, and a 54% increase in the number detained in long-term facilities for technical violations, drug, public order, and status offenses. ↩
In “Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2019” (2022), the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention defines status offenses as “behaviors that are not law violations for adults, such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility.” For a deep dive into status offenses, see Vera Institute for Justice’s 2017 report “Just Kids: When Misbehaving Is a Crime.” ↩
The eight states responsible for detaining nearly two-thirds of all kids held pretrial for technical violations (a total of 1,768 kids) were Alabama (69 kids), Michigan (87), Pennsylvania (99), Virginia (132), Florida (138), California (159), Ohio (168), and Texas (279). See the appendix for data on all states. ↩
The seven states responsible for detaining nearly half of all kids held for status offenses pretrial (a total of 242 kids) were Kentucky (9 kids), Ohio (9), West Virginia (9), Alabama (9), Michigan (12), Virginia (12), Louisiana (12), Texas (12), Indiana (15), and Pennsylvania (48). See the appendix for data on all states. ↩
This situation has worsened since our last report, which found over 40% of kids in pretrial detention were held over 30 days and nearly 500 were detained over a year. ↩
In 16 states, an even greater portion of youth in juvenile facilities are held for these offenses, including: 32% in Alabama; 27% in Michigan; 26% in Pennsylvania; 23% in Virginia; 20% in West Virginia and South Dakota; 19% in Arizona; 18% in Texas; 17% in Wyoming, Florida, and Arkansas; 16% in Nevada, Alaska, Tennessee, and South Carolina; and 15% in California. Source: Detailed Offense Profiles for each state in 2023 from the EZACJRP U.S. & State Profiles. ↩
Although the JJDPA’s “Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders” requirement states that youth charged with status offenses should not be placed in secure confinement, courts in some states take advantage of an exception allowing judges to confine youth for status offenses for up to seven days, if the offense violates a valid court order, such as “attend school regularly.” In FY 2021, this “valid court order exception” was used to confine 1,411 youth for status offenses in 13 states. ↩
While 38,213 cases ended in a placement, 188,261 ended in probation; 188,487 were dismissed. ↩
The National Center for Juvenile Justice defines “incorrigibility” as “being beyond the control of parents, guardians, or custodians or being disobedient of parental authority. This classification is referred to in various juvenile codes as unruly, unmanageable, and incorrigible.” Alabama, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia make up 59% of the confined youth population with “incorrigibility” recorded as their most serious offense. Pennsylvania alone accounts for 30% of kids confined for this charge nationwide. ↩
The National Center for Juvenile Justice defines “running away” as “leaving the custody and home of parents, guardians, or custodians without permission and failing to return within a reasonable length of time, in violation of a statute regulating the conduct of youth.” Kentucky, Michigan, South Carolina, Texas, and Indiana make up 51% of the confined juvenile population with “running away” as their most serious offense. Indiana alone accounts for 23% of kids confined for this charge nationwide. ↩
The National Center for Juvenile Justice defines “truancy” as a “violation of a compulsory school attendance law.” Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia, and West Virginia make up 53% of the confined juvenile population with “truancy” as their most serious offense. Alabama and West Virginia account for a combined 31% of kids confined for this charge nationwide. ↩
The National Center for Juvenile Justice defines “underage drinking” as a “violation of laws regulating the possession, purchase, or consumption of liquor by minors,” noting that “some states treat consumption of alcohol and public drunkenness of juveniles as status offenses rather than delinquency.” Pennsylvania and West Virginia make up 50% of the confined juvenile population with “underage drinking” as their most serious offense. Pennsylvania alone accounts for 34% of kids confined for this charge nationwide. ↩
The number of youth in adult jails and prisons fell from 4,577 in 2017 to 2,437 in 2023. (Our previous report showed 4,535 youth in adult prisons and jails in 2017, but the number of youth in prisons in 2017 has since been updated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 935 to 977.) ↩
In 2000, there were 3,047 juvenile confinement facilities, compared to 1,277 in 2022. ↩
Small facilities of 20 kids or less saw the greatest number of closures/repurposing between 2000 and 2022, but small facilities greatly outnumber medium and large facilities. Large facilities holding 100 kids or more saw the largest proportion of closures/repurposing over those years: there were 222 fewer youth prisons in 2022 than there were in 2000. ↩
Effective as of January 1, 2021, AB 1950 set the maximum term of probation for most misdemeanor crimes at one year, and caps probation for most felonies at two years. ↩
See the methodology for details about this estimate. For those curious about what behaviors are included in some of these offense categories, the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement Glossary states that “other drug offenses” include “drug possession or use, possession of drug paraphernalia, visiting a place where drugs are found, etc.” and “other public order offenses” include “obstruction of justice (escape from confinement, perjury, contempt of court, etc.), non-violent sex offenses, cruelty to animals, disorderly conduct, traffic offenses, etc.” 14,100 is a conservative estimate based on the most obvious low-level offenses, including status offenses, technical violations, and the offenses listed above. A more aggressive estimate could include all non-violent offenses. ↩
Our estimate includes 5,530 youth detained in juvenile facilities awaiting juvenile court adjudication, criminal court hearing, or transfer hearing, as well as 79 unconvicted youth in Indian country facilities. It does not include any of the 1,956 youth detained in adult jails in 2023, even though many are likely unconvicted, because their conviction status was not reported. See the methodology for details. ↩
Many juvenile legal system-focused organizations have proposed policy changes at every stage of the process. A few excellent examples include recommendations from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Campaign for Youth Justice (pages 38-44), W. Haywood Burns Institute (pages 13-15), and the No Kids In Prison. ↩
For a summary of this research, see Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults by Vincent Schiraldi, Bruce Western, and Kendra Bradner (2015) . ↩
The broad harms of youth incarceration are well documented, from pretrial detention to conditions in juvenile correctional facilities (youth prisons) and adult facilities. While incarceration inflicts serious harm to incarcerated adults, the experience of being removed from their homes and locked up is uniquely damaging for youth, who are in a critical stage of development and are more vulnerable to abuse than adults. ↩
Read about the data
In an effort to capture the full scope of youth confinement, this report aggregates data on youth held in both juvenile and adult facilities. Unfortunately, the juvenile and adult legal system data are not completely compatible, both in terms of vocabulary and the measures made available.
Because we anticipate this report will serve as an introduction to juvenile legal system issues for many already familiar with the adult criminal legal system, we have attempted to bridge the language gap between these two systems wherever possible, by providing criminal legal system “translations.” It should be noted, however, that the differences between juvenile and criminal legal system terminology reflect real (if subtle) philosophical and procedural differences between the two parallel systems.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides easy access to detailed, descriptive data analysis of juvenile residential placements and the youth held in them. In contrast, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) provides very limited information on youth held in other settings. For youth in adult prisons, all that is readily accessible in government reports is their number by sex and by jurisdictional agency (state or federal). In annual government reports on jails, youth are only differentiated by whether they are held as adults or juveniles. Slightly more detailed information is reported on youth in Indian country facilities, but the measures reported are not wholly consistent with the juvenile legal system survey, and facility-level analysis is necessary to separate youth from adults for most measures.
Despite these challenges, this report brings together the most recent data available on the number of youth held in various types of facilities and the most serious offense for which they are charged, adjudicated, or convicted. The only youth included in this analysis are involved in the juvenile or criminal legal process. Youth who are put in out-of-home placements because their parents or guardian are unwilling or unable to care for them (i.e., dependency cases) are not included in this analysis. The approximately 2,500 children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for immigration reasons are also not included, since they are not held there due to juvenile or criminal legal system involvement. While these various systems that keep children in out-of-home arrangements are interrelated, an analysis of the impact of immigration or child welfare policies on youth legal system involvement is beyond the scope of this report.
Data sources:
- Juvenile facilities: Most of the data in this report comes from the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) in 2023. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reports one-day counts of youth under 21 in “juvenile residential facilities for court-involved offenders” on the Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP) website. It includes facility data including facility self-classification (type), size, operation (local, state, or private), and whether it is locked or staff secure. It also includes data on the youth held in these facilities, including offense type, placement status, days since admission, sex, race, and age. The analysis of juvenile facility characteristics and demographics of youth in juvenile facilities are based on cross tabulation using the “National Crosstabs” tool. For state-level analysis, including detailed offense data for technical violations and status offenses, we used EZACJRP’s “US & State Profiles.” However, caution should be used in interpreting this data as, in some states, over 30% of the data was imputed. According to EZACJRP’s methodology, cell counts for each state were rounded to the nearest multiple of three. Data for each state represent the state where the youth committed the offense for which they were being held, but the state of offense is not always reported and these instances are not evenly distributed across states. For more information, please read EZACJRP’s state table methodology.
The Juvenile Residential Facility Census Databook: 2000-2022 (JRFC) was used to supplement the CJRP data, and provided more information about the number, size, and type of juvenile facilities over time. - Adult jails: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports the number of people age 17 or younger held in local jails with a breakdown of how many are held as adults versus juveniles in Display 4 of Jail Inmates in 2023.
- Adult prisons: BJS reports the year-end count of “prisoners age 17 or younger under jurisdiction of federal correctional authorities or the custody of state correctional authorities” in Table 15 of Prisoners in 2022. (The BJS Corrections Statistical Analysis Tool (CSAT) — Prisoners also reports these counts from 2000-2021.) Prisoners in 2022 states that “the [Federal Bureau of Prisons] holds prisoners age 17 or younger in privately operated facilities,” but it is unclear which facilities actually hold these youth. We included these facilities in our count of adult prisons, but it is possible that the 25 youth under Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) jurisdiction in 2022 may have been captured in the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement data, and therefore it’s possible they were double-counted.
- Indian country: BJS reports the number of youth age 17 and younger in Indian country jails by facility and sex in Table 6 of Jails in Indian Country, 2023 and more detailed facility-level data including sex, conviction status, offense type, and admissions in the full dataset, which we downloaded from ICPSR. Using the facility-level data, we were able to determine how many youth are held in facilities that only hold youth versus those in combined adult/juvenile facilities (where the data cannot be disaggregated by age group). The youth in juvenile-only facilities are included in our total population of youth confinement, but excluded from analysis of the characteristics of juvenile facilities and youth in residential placement, which is based on the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) data. BJS reports details that are similar to CJRP data, but do not match them perfectly (for example, some offense types have different names). We matched offense types to those in the CJRP data to include offense data for this population for the first time in this report. While most offense types were obvious, the BJS category “Warrant” was not; we concluded that these offenses were likely most analogous to technical violations.
- Case data: Juvenile case data, including data on probation and case handling, comes from the Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics (EZAJCS) database. We used the most recent data available, which comes from 2022. The EZAJCS methodology notes that cell counts are estimates, and that some data collection may have been impacted due to COVID-19 delays and shutdowns. For more information, please read EZAJCS Methodology.
To compare racial and ethnic representation in juvenile facilities to the general population of all youth (17 or younger) in the U.S., we used general population data from the 2023 “Child population by race and age group” table by the Kids Count Data Center (the Annie E. Casey Foundation).
The estimate of the number of youth confined for low-level offenses who could be considered for release (in the Conclusions section) includes 14,122 held in juvenile facilities on a given day in 2023. Of these youth, 777 were held for status offenses, 754 for “other drug offenses,” 1,960 for “other public order offenses,” and 3,308 for technical violations. Additionally (although the offense categories are somewhat inconsistent with those in the CJRP), Indian country facilities holding only youth held 39 youth for seemingly low-level offenses: 9 for public intoxication, 3 for DWI/DUI, 7 for status offenses, 17 for “warrant” (which we counted as technical violations) and 3 for “other offense unspecified.” We did not include youth held in adult prisons and jails in this estimate because offense types were not reported for them.
The estimate of the number of youth detained pretrial who could be considered for release includes 7,244 youth detained in juvenile facilities and 79 unconvicted youth in Indian country facilities.
At the time of the survey, 7,244 youth in juvenile facilities were detained awaiting either adjudication, criminal court hearing, or transfer hearing (essentially, they were being held before being found delinquent or guilty). This figure does not include the 1,662 youth detained for technical violations, status offenses, “other drug offenses,” or “other public order offenses” while they awaited these hearings, because we already included them in the roughly 14,100 youth held for low-level offenses that could be released.
Jails in Indian Country, 2023 reports at least 79 unconvicted youth in juvenile-only facilities. This may slightly underreport the unconvicted population, because the conviction status of youth in combined adult and juvenile Indian country facilities was not reported separately from the adults, and one juvenile facility did not report conviction status.
Youth held in adult prisons and jails were not included in this estimate because conviction status was not reported for these youth. However Jail Inmates in 2023 notes that jails “may hold juveniles before or after they are adjudicated.”
The smaller graphics showing the number of youth detained pretrial and held for the lowest-level offenses only include the data from juvenile facilities in the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, as Indian country data does not disaggregate “unconvicted” (detained) and “convicted” (adjudicated) youth by offense type, and because the offense categories themselves are not the same. Our estimates for youth in Indian country facilities (based on the weighted data from Jails in Indian Country 2023) would add another nine youth held for status offenses and another 22 held for “warrants” (technical violations).
The small graphic showing youth held in the “most restrictive” types of facilities includes adult prisons and jails as well as facilities included in the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, but excludes youth in Indian country facilities, which do not self-classify as those in the CJRP do, and for which we have no data about their restrictiveness.
About the authors
Wendy Sawyer is the Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. Along with directing the organization’s research priorities, Wendy is the author (or co-author) of major reports including Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, Beyond the Count: A deep dive into state prison populations, Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems, and the previous Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie reports. Wendy also publishes briefings on recent data releases, academic research, women’s incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.
Brian Nam-Sonenstein is a Senior Editor and Researcher at the Prison Policy Initiative. He is the author of several publications, including reports analyzing how prison disciplinary policies are used as a tool for mass punishment and the systemic problems shaping ‘healthcare’ behind bars, as well as briefings explaining why ending mass incarceration is an economic justice issue and how providing housing can help interrupt a major pathway to prison created by the criminalization of homelessness. In addition to his work as a researcher, Brian plays a pivotal role in supporting other members of the Research Department in shaping the framing and messaging of their publications in a way that maximizes their impact and reach.
About the Prison Policy Initiative
The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Alongside reports like this that help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation’s fight to keep the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail telephone industry and the video visitation industry.
Acknowledgments
This report was made possible by the generous contributions of individuals across the country who support justice reform. Individual donors give our organization the resources and flexibility to quickly turn our insights into new movement resources.
All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this report builds on the successful collaborations of the several versions of this report we have produced since 2018. The authors would like to thank their Prison Policy Initiative colleagues for their feedback and assistance in the drafting of this report, as well as Elydah Joyce, who helped design the main graphic, and Bob Machuga, who created the cover. We also acknowledge all of the donors, researchers, programmers and designers who helped the Prison Policy Initiative develop the Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie series of reports.
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