This study confirms that incarcerating youth is toxic for both those youth and for society, by demonstrating that youth prisons do not reduce future offenses, waste taxpayer dollars, and expose youth to dangerous and abusive conditions.
This commentary includes more useful observations for those who need convincing, like the fact that 336 of every 100,000 of the world’s incarcerated youth is locked away in a U.S. prison facility– nearly five times the rate of South Africa, the next country on list– and that juvenile crime fell when Texas authorities began to decrease the jailed youth population.