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The SPLC has a long-standing commitment to protecting children trapped in the juvenile justice system from abusive conditions and to ensuring that they have meaningful opportunities for treatment and rehabilitation.
Despite widespread misconceptions, very few children confined in prison are serious offenders. Most are non-violent. Nationwide, about eight in 10 suffer from emotional disturbance or some other educational disability. Almost all come from poor households. About two-thirds are African American or Latino.
Many of these children simply do not belong in the criminal justice system — but they wind up there because of inadequate special education programs and overly punitive school discipline policies.
Incarceration brutalizes children and tears apart their families. It drains government resources while doing little, if anything, to reduce crime. Juvenile prisons are often plagued with violence and provide no meaningful rehabilitation, treatment or education. Recidivism studies have consistently shown that youths released from juvenile prison are likely to re-offend. Experts agree there is a direct pipeline from the juvenile justice system to the adult prison system.
By targeting the juvenile justice system, we aim to intervene in the lives of society's most vulnerable members and stem the flow of children into adult prisons — a path known as the school-to-prison pipeline. We combine litigation, legislative advocacy, community organizing and public education to fight for juvenile justice reform in seven states in the Southeast.
Since 2005, our Mississippi Youth Justice Project has worked with grassroots advocates and state leaders to achieve major systemic reforms in that state, creating a framework for model juvenile justice programs throughout the country. A Department of Justice report had chronicled horrific abuses in Mississippi youth facilities: children were routinely beaten, shackled, tied to poles and hogtied. Suicidal girls were locked in dark, solitary cells without ventilation or toilets. Children were denied basic needs, including education and proper medical care. State legislation passed in 2005 and 2006 is now transforming the state's system to one that relies less on incarceration and more on community-based treatment.
In Louisiana, we support the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. In 2000, we teamed with the JJPL to negotiate a settlement agreement with the state and the U.S. Department of Justice that requires the state to reduce violence and improve medical and mental health services at juvenile correctional facilities.
We are also a member of the Alabama Youth Justice Coalition , a collaborative venture that involves child, disability and other advocacy groups statewide. Although juvenile crime in Alabama has plummeted in the past 10 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children in locked juvenile justice facilities. Alabama now has one of the highest juvenile incarceration rates in the United States. About 8 in 10 children locked up in Alabama in 2006 were imprisoned for non-violent misbehavior.
In addition, we operate the Southern Juvenile Defender Center, a seven-state project aimed at improving the quality of indigent defense for children in criminal proceedings. The SJDC conducts training seminars for defense counsel and provides assistance in the form of research, motions banks and litigation support.
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