The Number of Youth in Secure Detention Returns to Pre-Pandemic Levels

A month­ly sur­vey of youth jus­tice agen­cies by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion finds that the dra­mat­ic drop in youth deten­tion that accom­pa­nied the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has evap­o­rat­ed. After hav­ing fall­en as much as 30% in the first few months of the pan­dem­ic, the num­ber of youth held in juve­nile deten­tion had risen almost to its pre-pan­dem­ic aver­age as of June 1, 2022 — and for Black youth, the num­ber detained was 6% high­er. In total, the June fig­ures rep­re­sent an increase of more than 40% since Jan­u­ary 2021 and 17% just since the start of 2022. 

More­over, although the youth deten­tion pop­u­la­tion is now sim­i­lar in size to what it was before the pan­dem­ic, sig­nif­i­cant and con­cern­ing changes have occurred beneath the surface:

• The dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of deten­tion for Black youth — already dis­tress­ing­ly high before the pan­dem­ic — has increased. From Jan­u­ary to March 2020 (the months just before the pan­dem­ic) Black youth were detained at more than six times the rate of white youth. Since then, that dis­par­i­ty has widened — both when the over­all youth deten­tion pop­u­la­tion was falling through ear­ly 2021, and when it was ris­ing over the past 15 months. As a result, from April 2022 to June 2022, Black youth were detained at eight times the rate of white youth.
• Deten­tion stays have grown longer. A pro­tract­ed slow­down in releas­ing youth from deten­tion since the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic has kept the detained pop­u­la­tion high­er than it should be — almost 40% high­er as of June 1, 2022. The release rate slowed much more for Black youth than for white youth in 2021 and 2022 —lead­ing direct­ly to the wors­en­ing racial dis­par­i­ties in who is detained overall.
• Juris­dic­tions that had sim­i­lar pat­terns of deten­tion use before the pan­dem­ic began have adopt­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent pat­terns over the course of the pan­dem­ic. As a result, the one-third of sur­vey sites that have reduced deten­tion the most have sus­tained a 37% reduc­tion from their pre-pan­dem­ic aver­age. In con­trast, the one-third of sites that have increased deten­tion the most have seen a 56% increase, all of which has occurred in the past 13 months (since May 2021).

Giv­en that even a short stay in deten­tion can have pro­found and poten­tial­ly life­long neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the young peo­ple involved, these find­ings raise alarms for the well-being of thou­sands of young peo­ple and chal­lenge juve­nile jus­tice sys­tems across the coun­try to detain young peo­ple as a last resort.

The find­ings come at a time when many prac­ti­tion­ers are report­ing height­ened con­cerns about safe­ty in their com­mu­ni­ties or con­cerns about ris­ing youth crime. ​“The sur­vey find­ings, how­ev­er, do not indi­cate a surge of young peo­ple com­ing into deten­tion across the board,” says Nate Balis, direc­tor of the Foundation’s Juve­nile Jus­tice Strat­e­gy Group. ​“The data don’t give us rea­son to believe that ris­ing crime explains over­all pop­u­la­tion gains in deten­tion. In fact, the rate of admis­sions is con­sid­er­ably low­er in 2022 than it was in the ear­ly months of 2020.” 

Charts and Find­ings on Youth Detention

After a rapid decline when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit in the spring of 2020, the youth deten­tion pop­u­la­tion began ris­ing in spring 2021 and has returned to its pre-pan­dem­ic lev­el in sum­mer 2022.

When the pan­dem­ic began in March 2020, the num­ber of detained youths in sur­vey sites plunged from an aver­age of more than 3,500 from Jan­u­ary to March 2020, to just 2,514 in May 2020 — a drop of almost 30% in just nine weeks. Through the school clos­ings and racial reck­on­ing of the next 12 months, the pop­u­la­tion stayed close to that low lev­el through May 2021. But the pop­u­la­tion has grown more than 30% since then (40% since Jan­u­ary 2021) and 17% just since the start of 2022. On June 1, 2022, there were 3,346 young peo­ple in deten­tion in sur­vey sites — slight­ly high­er than the Jan­u­ary 1, 2020, pop­u­la­tion of 3,331.

The rate of admis­sions to deten­tion cen­ters is still much low­er than it was before the pan­dem­ic. The pop­u­la­tion has returned to its old lev­el because young peo­ple are stay­ing in deten­tion longer.

The rate of admis­sions to deten­tion has dropped by 30% since the begin­ning of 2020. That reduc­tion has not result­ed in a small­er deten­tion pop­u­la­tion, because of a slow­down in the pace of releas­es. In oth­er words, those young peo­ple who are get­ting detained in 2022 are stay­ing longer than youth who were detained before March 2020. The slow­down in releas­es has ful­ly off­set the reduc­tion in admis­sions, result­ing in a detained pop­u­la­tion that is rough­ly the same size it was before the pandemic.

The brisk pace of releas­es in March 2020 showed the system’s deci­sion-mak­ers were capa­ble of speedy case processing.

If youth jus­tice sys­tems had been able to main­tain the March 2020 release rate in the months since then, the detained pop­u­la­tion would have been 39% low­er on June 1, 2022. In oth­er words, rough­ly two of every five young peo­ple in deten­tion cen­ters on June 1, 2022, would not have been there if youth jus­tice sys­tems had main­tained the pace of releas­es that they achieved 26 months earlier.

The slow­down in release rates of youth from deten­tion has fall­en espe­cial­ly hard on Black youth. As a result, the growth of youth deten­tion since its lows ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic has pre­dom­i­nant­ly affect­ed Black youth. 

On June 1, 2022, the num­ber of Black youths in deten­tion was 6% above its aver­age lev­el from Jan­u­ary to March 2020 (before the pan­dem­ic). The num­ber of white youths in deten­tion was 18% low­er than its pre-pan­dem­ic average. 

This is not due to dif­fer­ences in the trend of admis­sions between Black and white youth, which have been sim­i­lar through­out the course of the sur­vey. Rather, the increas­ing dis­par­i­ty is due to the release rate slow­ing down much more for Black youth than for white youth. The release rate also slowed more for Lati­no youth than for white youth, but the slow­down has affect­ed Black youth most severely.

In the sur­vey juris­dic­tions that pro­vide deten­tion data dis­ag­gre­gat­ed by race and eth­nic­i­ty, Black youth were more than six times as like­ly to be in deten­tion than white youth before the pan­dem­ic. That dis­par­i­ty has grown when the total detained pop­u­la­tion was:

• falling from ear­ly 2020 to ear­ly 2021; and
• ris­ing from ear­ly 2021 to June of 2022.

Black youth account for 18% of the age 10–17 pop­u­la­tion in sur­vey sites but account­ed for 68% of the growth in youth deten­tion from its post-pan­dem­ic low point in Jan­u­ary 2021 to June 2022.

Over the course of the pan­dem­ic, juris­dic­tions that ini­tial­ly had sim­i­lar pat­terns of deten­tion use now look very dif­fer­ent from each other. 

Com­par­ing sur­vey sites that have seen the largest reduc­tions in deten­tion with those that have seen the largest increas­es reveals a large and widen­ing divide in the way that dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions have respond­ed to the past two years. Adjust­ed for the size of their youth pop­u­la­tions, these sites entered the pan­dem­ic with sim­i­lar rates of deten­tion, sim­i­lar admis­sions rates and sim­i­lar release rates. But the paths they have tak­en since then have been strik­ing­ly dissimilar. 

• At the start of the pan­dem­ic, almost all sur­vey sites report­ed steep drops in admis­sions. The one-third of sites with the largest reduc­tions in deten­tion use sus­tained that drop in admis­sions, while keep­ing the pace of releas­es close to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. As a result, as of June 1, 2022, these sites had slashed their detained pop­u­la­tions by 37% below their pre-pan­dem­ic average. 
• The third of sites with the largest increas­es in deten­tion did not sus­tain the drop in admis­sions. Even more notably, their pace of releas­es slowed down sub­stan­tial­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, they were detain­ing 56% more young peo­ple on June 1, 2022, than they did before the pandemic.

All the dif­fer­ences in deten­tion use across these groups of sites as of June 2022 emerged over the past 26 months, based on dif­fer­ent local choic­es about how to respond to con­di­tions that have affect­ed almost every com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the pan­dem­ic era.

“The big ques­tion ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic and fol­low­ing George Floyd’s mur­der in 2020 was whether there had become a new nor­mal for juve­nile jus­tice of dra­mat­i­cal­ly few­er youth in deten­tion and greater equi­ty among Black, Lati­no and white youth,” Balis says. ​“Over two years lat­er, we’re see­ing that progress take hold for a third of the places in our sur­vey. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, for anoth­er third of places, we’re see­ing trends worse than the old sta­tus quo: more youth admit­ted to deten­tion, more youth stay­ing longer in deten­tion and Black youth feel­ing the brunt of both.”

About the Survey

This sur­vey, con­duct­ed each month since the pan­dem­ic began in March 2020, is aimed at assess­ing the effects of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic on juve­nile jus­tice sys­tems around the coun­try. This analy­sis is based on reports from 123 juris­dic­tions in 32 states, rep­re­sent­ing 26% of the nation’s youth pop­u­la­tion (ages 10–17), for which data have been sub­mit­ted for every month from Jan­u­ary 2020 through June 2022. For the num­bers that are dis­ag­gre­gat­ed by race, the analy­sis is based on reports for 116 juris­dic­tions across 31 states con­tain­ing 24% of the youth pop­u­la­tion. The Month­ly Deten­tion Sur­vey rep­re­sents a non-ran­dom sam­ple of youth jus­tice sys­tems in the Unit­ed States, and aggre­gates from this sur­vey should not be regard­ed as nation­al estimates.

Read more about how the sur­vey is con­duct­ed and see pre­vi­ous data releases