This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for future newsletters.
When 17-year-old David was put in isolation for fighting in juvenile detention in Tennessee, it made him want to fight even more. “I couldn’t do anything but do pushups and get mad and think about stuff. It makes you want to come out and put your hands on somebody,” the teen, who was using a pseudonym because he is a minor, told the nonprofit news outlet MLK50.
He wasn’t the only one to go through the psychological anguish that solitary confinement can cause. In Shelby County, which includes Memphis and is where David was detained, children as young as 13 have been held in near-total isolation for days and even weeks at a time, without schooling, fresh air, or basic human contact. Experts say that kind of social deprivation is a “well-recognized” trigger for psychiatric consequences like depression, anxiety and psychosis, and that young people with developing brains are especially vulnerable to the effects of solitary confinement. It can also reinforce impulses to engage in behaviors that officials are trying to prevent.
Even for young people who are not held in isolation, a lack of meaningful programming can also contribute to increased violence. That was the conclusion of the independent monitor tasked with improving conditions in the long-troubled juvenile detention halls in Los Angeles County.
This week, members of the county board of supervisors criticized county officials over a lack of programming for youth recently transferred to the reopened Barry J. Nidorf juvenile hall. It had been shuttered in 2023 after being declared unfit for use, but was reopened in September because officials needed to transfer youth from another troubled facility, reported Jason Henry of the Pasadena Star-News.
New York City juvenile detention centers, meanwhile, were so overcrowded last month that detainees were sleeping in classrooms and common areas, typically on the floor in a plastic contraption known as a BarkerBunk. Youth advocates say these accommodations lead to lost sleep, lost classroom time and even fights and violence.
None of these stories will surprise anyone who has followed youth detention in recent years. The problems — too many young people, too few staff, facilities that can’t meet even minimal standards of care — are constantly recurring, as is the attempt to fix the system by expanding the number of beds available.
Citing months of violence and overcrowding, officials in South Carolina are trying to more than double beds at the state-run youth detention facilities. The South Carolina Daily Gazette reported Monday that 81 beds have been added in just the last five months, due in part to the reopening of a facility that had been closed in 2023.
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, officials are also building out capacity, from 40 beds to 64, with a stated focus on improved classroom and recreational space. Vermont, meanwhile, has spent years trying, and repeatedly failing, to build even a small secure juvenile facility after closing its only one in 2020. Without a separate facility, an increasing number of young people are being placed in units in the state’s adult prisons.
And in Wisconsin, lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to replace the state’s troubled Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons after years of scandals and federal scrutiny. That move comes even as the aging facilities have been found to be fully compliant with 50 court-ordered reforms tied to factors like excessive use of isolation and pepper spray. The new buildings have been pitched as smaller and more therapeutic than the old facilities they are replacing, but are still fundamentally grounded in the practice of locking children up.
But Wisconsin and several other states are also investing in a very different idea of what juvenile justice can look like. At the Grow Academy in Madison, teenage boys in the juvenile system spend their days tending to vegetables, learning emotional regulation and living in a dorm-style building that is run by the state’s department of corrections, but looks nothing like a jail. This year, the state legislature and Gov. Tony Evers set aside $1.5 million to expand the program, which has been operating since 2014.
Aidan Raney, a former resident, told the Capital Times this week that the difference between Grow Academy and the other facilities he spent time in as a teen was like night and day. “This was the first time in my life that I had been given resources that actually helped me,” Raney said. “I still garden to this day. I’m still very interested in that. I find that very soothing, very therapeutic.”
Other jurisdictions have seen renewed pushes to keep youth out of the justice system altogether. In Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul, Minnesota, District Attorney John Choi has embraced a diversion and restorative justice model, which this year accounted for nearly 25% of juvenile cases handled by the office. Rather than relying solely on the contents of police reports to determine what charges to bring and how, the county prosecutors are asked to consider, “Is this truly a criminal case?” Prosecutors are looking for unmet needs, like unaddressed abuse at home or poverty. The program is offered not just to those facing low-level shoplifting charges, but also in cases including assaults and repeated car thefts, reported The Imprint.
And in Pennsylvania, a proposed legislative reform would require diversion, instead of placement in a facility, for youth facing a first or second offense for misdemeanors or non-violent felonies. Another prospective bill “would limit fees imposed on juveniles in the court system, acknowledging that they create an excessive financial burden on families that may already be struggling,” reported The Center Square last month.
“Simply put,” public defender Allison Ware told the outlet, “families should not have to choose between paying their utility bills and their child’s court costs.”
