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The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative program (JDAI) operates at 75 sites in 19 states, using eight "core strategies" to minimize youth delinquency and facilitate rehabilitation. They include:
-- encouraging collaboration between juvenile justice agencies and community organizations;
-- alternatives to detention, such as electronic monitoring;
-- efforts to reduce custody rates and racial discrimination; and
-- measures to correct deviant behavior.
The Santa Cruz, CA program is considered a model, offering health and drug abuse counseling, resume writing, computer classes, meditation, and adult mentoring. It's seen the per day number of detained children decline from 50 to 16 on average, saving millions of dollars and helping youths get on with their lives productively. Counties in other states have their own success stories, sharply reducing detention and crime rates. They show alternative measures work. Juvenile justice is possible, and young people can benefit to become productive members of society.
America's Gulag Prison System
Despite effective alternative ways, America's criminal justice system is shameful, cruel, degrading, bulging, and counterproductive, resulting in the world's largest prison population at over 2.4 million at yearend 2008. It includes inmates in federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US territories, and numbers held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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