A fifteen-year-old spends twenty-three hours a day in a cell designed for adult inmates, receiving one hour of recreation in a cage. Another youth in a therapeutic facility attends school, participates in group counseling, and receives visits from family in a living room setting. A detention center investigation uncovers rampant staff-on-youth violence, sexual abuse, and use of solitary confinement on children as young as twelve. A well-run facility reports that ninety percent of youth complete educational programming and maintain family contact throughout their stay. The experience of youth custody varies so dramatically across jurisdictions and facilities that generalizations become difficult. Yet certain realities persist: youth in detention experience trauma, miss critical developmental periods, and face long-term consequences that research increasingly suggests outweigh any rehabilitative benefits incarceration might provide.
The Case for Minimal or No Youth Incarceration
Advocates argue that incarcerating youth causes more harm than it prevents. Adolescent brains are still developing, particularly in areas governing emotional regulation and identity formation. Confinement during this critical period disrupts development in ways that create lasting damage. Youth in detention experience higher rates of suicide, self-harm, sexual victimization, and violence than in virtually any other setting. Even facilities with good programming cannot replicate normal developmental experiences: peer relationships, family connections, community involvement, and gradual assumption of adult responsibilities. Research shows that youth incarcerated for similar offenses have worse outcomes than youth given community-based alternatives. They are more likely to reoffend, less likely to complete education, and face employment barriers that community supervision does not create. From this view, youth detention should be reserved for the tiny fraction who pose genuine ongoing danger. For everyone else, community alternatives exist that provide supervision, treatment, and accountability without the developmental harm and long-term consequences of incarceration.
The Case for Secure Custody When Necessary
Others maintain that while detention should be used sparingly, it remains necessary for youth who commit serious offenses, pose ongoing danger, or fail in less restrictive settings. Some youth have engaged in violence so severe that community safety requires separation. Others have failed multiple diversion programs and community placements, demonstrating unwillingness to comply with non-secure supervision. Victims and communities deserve protection, which sometimes requires incarceration regardless of age. From this perspective, the problem is not detention itself but conditions within facilities. Properly resourced, well-staffed facilities that provide education, treatment, family contact, and trauma-informed care can serve rehabilitative functions while ensuring public safety. Abolishing youth detention entirely would leave courts with no options when community alternatives fail or when offenses are too serious for non-secure responses. The solution is reform and oversight to ensure humane conditions, not eliminating secure custody as an option.
The Oversight Failure
Youth detention facilities often operate with minimal external oversight. Investigations occur after abuse scandals, not as prevention. Staff receive inadequate training in adolescent development, trauma responses, and de-escalation. Facilities designed for adults house youth with no appropriate programming. Solitary confinement, chemical restraints, and excessive force remain common despite evidence of harm and policies supposedly prohibiting these practices. Private facilities operate with profit incentives that conflict with adequate care. Even when regulations exist, enforcement is sporadic and consequences for violations are minimal. Whether this reflects insufficient resources, lack of political will, or structural problems inherent in incarcerating youth without constant public attention remains unclear. But the gap between stated standards and actual conditions suggests that oversight mechanisms have fundamentally failed.
The Question
If youth detention creates developmental harm, increases reoffending, and operates with conditions that would be unacceptable for adults, can it ever be justified, or should abolishing youth incarceration be the goal? When facilities vary from therapeutic to abusive, is the solution better regulation and oversight, or does that assume systems can reliably maintain humane conditions for populations society prefers not to think about? And if certain youth genuinely require separation from community for public safety, what does humane custody look like for people whose brains are still developing and who remain capable of profound change?