A just released report by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington D.C.- based think tank, examined the impact of inappropriately incarcerating youth in secure detention facilities. Data revealed in The Dangers of Detention: The Impact of Incarcerating Youth in Detention and Other Secure Facilities indicate the misapplication of detention leads to higher rates of recidivism for incarcerated youth when compared to youth supervised in alternative settings. "Not only does inappropriately detaining youth cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year, but the overuse of detention generally does not make our communities any safer," said Bart Lubow, head of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), an ongoing project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Model sites that have adopted JDAI reforms for their juvenile justice systems have experienced significant reductions in average daily population (ADP), a drop in juvenile arrests, lower disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) and a substantial savings in tax dollars.

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