skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Friday, March 29, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Poll Shows Support for Shifting Youth Prison Strategies

play audio
Play

Friday, March 4, 2016   

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio's three juvenile prisons are among the oldest in the nation, and there is a new push to shutter them along with facilities in 28 other states.

A new national campaign calling for the closures, Youth First, released a poll Thursday showing that about 77 percent of Americans favor changing the focus of the juvenile-justice system from incarceration to rehabilitation.

Erin Davies, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Coalition in Ohio, said prisons are not a safe, supportive environment that's needed to help troubled kids become positive, contributing members of society.

"When youths go away to a facility, they may learn skills in a vacuum where they're away from their peers, their family, their environment," she said. "But community-based programs really help teach a youth skills that they need where they live."

Davies said Ohio has been a national leader in transitioning to safe, less expensive, more effective programs. She said there were nearly 3,000 youths in locked-down facilities in 1992, compared with about 1,000 today. Ohio once had more than 10 juvenile prisons and is down to three.

Da'Quon Beaver spent most of his youth in juvenile prisons in Virginia and now advocates for reform. He said anything that happens in an adult prison also occurs in youth facilities, including fights, riots and sexual abuse. Beaver said there are very few opportunities for education.

"For 12 hours a day, our kids aren't doing anything," he said. "They're not learning. They're not being rehabilitated. They're sitting in a unit with no windows, watching a box TV with about four channels. But the worst of this abuse came from how far our youth are from their families."

Along with the poll, Youth First also released a new mapping tool of youth facilities as well as the racial disparities among committed youths. Davies said youths of color are much more likely to be locked up despite the fact that they commit similar crimes as white youths.

"When black and white youths admit in an anonymous survey what offenses they do, they self-report same levels of delinquency offenses," she said. "So this is a true disparity and it's worse the deeper that youth go into the system."

Seventy percent of respondents in the poll supported requiring states to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the youth justice system, and more than half favor redirecting the savings from closing youth prisons to community-based programs.

The poll and tools are available online at youthfirstinitiative.org.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the popular abortion pill Mifepristone and will weigh in on whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was correct in how it can be dosed and prescribed. (Ascannio/Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Missouri residents are worried about future access to birth control. The latest survey from The Right Time, an initiative based in Missouri…


Social Issues

play sound

Wisconsin children from low-income families are now on track to get nutritious foods over the summer. Federal officials have approved the Badger …

Social Issues

play sound

Almost 2,900 people are unsheltered on any given night in the Beehive State. Gov. Spencer Cox is celebrating signing nine bills he says are geared …


The U.S. teaching workforce remains primarily white while the percentage of Black teachers has declined. However, the percentage of Asian and Latinx teachers is rising.(WavebreakMediaMicro/Adobestock)

Social Issues

play sound

Education advocates are calling on lawmakers to increase funding for programs to combat the teacher shortage. Around 37% of schools nationwide …

Environment

play sound

New York's Legislature is considering a bill to get clean-energy projects connected to the grid faster. It's called the RAPID Act, for "Renewable …

Social Issues

play sound

Earlier this month, a new Arizona Public Service rate hike went into effect and one senior advocacy group said those on a fixed income may struggle …

Social Issues

play sound

Michigan recently implemented a significant juvenile justice reform package following recommendations from a task force made up of prosecutors…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021