Via Wikimedia Commons
Across America, fewer children are behind bars. And nowhere has seen a bigger drop in incarcerated youth than Tennessee.
According to a new study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation the state saw a 66 percent change from 1997 to 2010.
One big drop came in the late 90s when the state first placed both child welfare and juvenile detention under the same department. The second came a few years ago, as Memphis high schools began dealing in-house with certain assault cases, rather than sending kids to court. In both cases, Linda O’Neal with the Tennessee Council on Children and Youth says there’s been a shift away from dealing with problems by pulling kids out of society.
“If we focus on the underlying issues in the least intrusive way possible we produce better results.”
The state has closed one of its juvenile facilities. Money was the reason for shuttering Taft Development Center last year, but overall declines meant there were enough vacancies elsewhere to handle the kids who’d been at Taft.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM