Youth Detention and Incarceration Facilities in the United States (2010 to February 2023): Mapping Closure Intents and Implementation

From the Discussion:

“This study illuminates pathways for future research to explore facility closures. Such research should investigate the impact of specific drivers supporting completed closures of youth facilities, including the combination of stated reasons to appeal to different audiences. Notably, we only found 1 paper in our scoping review that explores the strategies used by activists to close a youth detention center. As more jurisdictions rethink their approach to juvenile justice, research should examine the particulars of budgeting and processes for actually closing facilities and expanding community alternatives. Supplementing reform arguments for facility closure with cost and reducing numbers may provide broader support.

Finally, our study extends the existing research landscape of youth incarceration and highlights potential opportunities for collaboration between advocacy and academia. Most of the academic articles within the youth legal system field that we found in our scoping re-view focus on reform efforts, rather than on decarceration and abolition. While emerging research has focused on the impacts of individual diversion programs and evaluations of specific programming, scholarship in this domain is not fully grappling with the complexities of actually closing youth incarceration facilities. This work is fundamentally rooted in the complexities of engaging critical audiences—including local and state governmental leaders—to reimagine the current system of incarceration and envision alternatives that support youths and their families, center impacted youths and harmed parties, and foster youth healing, accountability, and true com-munity safety. In our experience, public will and broad community support are also essential to ensure politicians stay committed to closures and fund the robust alternatives needed to better support youths. Interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration will be needed to promote facility closures with corresponding system transformation efforts for meaningful and sustained reductions in youth detention and incarceration.”