Campaign Calls for Closure of 80 Youth Prisons Nationwide

Without the support of his family, Da’Quon Beaver doesn’t know how he would have made it through the seven years he spent behind bars beginning at age 14.

“My mother was there for me every step of the way,” Beaver told TakePart. “A lot of youth [in prison] don’t get visits, don’t get the attention that they need. But they were just like me—I want some attention, I’m young, and I want to be loved. They didn’t have that support system.”

Two years after his release at 22, the Richmond, Virginia, native is dedicating his life to changing the way kids like him interact with the juvenile justice system. Since last May, he has worked with RISE for Youth, a project of the Virginia-based Legal Aid Justice Center focused on community alternatives to youth incarceration.

“We need a continuum of alternatives to incarceration that keep our youth connected, not just punish them,” Beaver said.

During the seven years he was incarcerated, Beaver was transferred between various detention centers and youth facilities in his state, but he spent significant chunks of time at both Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center and Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center.

The two youth prisons are among 80 on a list published Thursday by the juvenile justice reform group Youth First. It is campaigning to close all 80 facilities, across 39 states, arguing that they are outdated, unsafe, and too large to effectively rehabilitate or serve those they house. The prisons that made the list are either more than 100 years old or have more than 100 kids. Instead, the group says, inmates should be placed in community programs that don’t sever ties with their family and friends.

“Our goal is to promote nonresidential alternatives [to these prisons],” said Mishi Faruqee, the national field director for Youth First. “The vast majority of young people can stay in their homes and communities as long as the right services and support are there for them.”

If a judge or prosecutor does deem a child incapable of being rehabilitated after committing a crime while staying in his or her community, Youth First supports small, therapeutic residential programs that house no more than 30 kids—compared with the 300 housed at Beaumont in Virginia. Successful examples of these smaller residential programs can be found in Missouri and Ohio.

Youth First’s new campaign has a unique mapping tool—the Youth Prison Inventory—that documents the locations of all youth prisons across the country and the number of youths housed versus capacity. It also includes breakdowns of incarcerated youths by race, ethnicity, and gender. The project tallies the cost of incarcerating kids in every state, comparing the most expensive confinement option per child with the cost per student of public school education. For example, in New York, it can cost as much as $353,663 to incarcerate a child, versus $19,818 to send that child to public school.

While the campaign might be ambitious, at least three governors—in Virginia, Connecticut, and Illinois—have already committed to closing some of the larger youth prisons in their states. Support for reform is also reflected in a public opinion poll commissioned by Youth First. One thousand adults across the political spectrum in all 50 states were asked a series of questions about youth prisons, and 73 percent agreed that kids can be taught to take responsibility for their actions without incarceration. Of respondents ages 18 to 29, 67 percent believe savings from the closure of youth prisons should be redirected to community-based programs, such as those supported by Beaver and his colleagues at RISE for Youth.

“There’s definitely momentum,” said Faruqee. “There is broad-based support for this.”