The number of incarcerated youth in the United States plummeted by 75% between 2000 and 2022. There are a number of contributing factors that drove this sea change, and one of them was the quietly effective push to shut down dozens of youth prisons across the country.

Our recently published research in the American Journal of Public Health reveals that between 2010 and 2023, governments pledged to close at least 118 of these facilities across 33 states, and successfully shutting down 62% of youth prisons.

What happened during all these closures? The answer is striking: youth arrests fell by 74%, and arrests for violent crimes dropped by 56%. When we reduced the number of youth in these facilities and shut down facilities where these youth might go, youth crime trends went down.

That trend continued until COVID-19, where we saw communities of color and low-income communities disproportionately impacted by school closures and widespread economic challenges. We are only now starting to see those effects slowly reverse.

States like Texas, Minnesota, California, and Maryland, along with counties like Sante Fe County in New Mexico, have all closed facilities. Other states like Wisconsin have committed to close their state facilities but have not actually successfully done so. The trend has been widespread — we found 33 states in total had facilities that the local or state governments had committed to closing. The graph below shows these closures have also taken place across the last decade or so, with a peak of state facilities closing in 2011 following the Great Recession.

Why have so many facilities closed? In most cases, the high cost of incarceration became unsustainable, especially as youth incarceration rates fell. In some places, facility staff were found to have perpetrated serious abuse against youth. In others, facilities were closed for maintenance or operational failures. And increasingly, policymakers recognized what the research has long shown: Youth incarceration fails to reduce harm and often makes outcomes worse — particularly for youth of color, who are disproportionately impacted by the system.

Read the full article about shutting down youth prisons by Benjamin Danielson, Karin Martin, and Emily Johnson at The Imprint.