Juvie Justice: where rubber meets road (NY Times)

Of course fewer children should go to jail, so that's what NYC is doing.

Juvie prisons in NY are nasty and expensive, and most of the kids in them are harmless. Also, they're usually poor and from least-stable families.

Michael Jacobson, the director of the Vera Institute for Justice, said he thought the combination of agencies was a natural move, given the numbers of children who commit crimes and have also previously had contact with child-welfare agencies. Studies have shown that nearly 20 percent of prisoners under the age of 30 have spent time in foster care, according to data from the Center for Family Representation, an organization that provides legal help to parents involved in Family Court.

Many juvenile offenders are expensive people, since they will almost certainly re-offend if they don't get help.

At juvenile prisons, the recidivism rates are high: three-quarters of the young people released from detention are arrested again within three years.

I think understanding the context of juvenile offenders and the juvenile justice system sheds light on a bigger picture of the causes and effects of individual dysfunction, and the generally irrational responses to it all the way around. Over the years, I've pieced together a perspective about this dynamic that seems unorthodox and might be worth sharing, which is probably going to be a major theme in this blog.