Tennessee Juvenile Justice System Reforms Aimed At Blacks

Justice officials stipulate changes to improve conditions at detention center

On Monday, Tennessee’s Shelby County and the Justice Department signed an extensive agreement to overhaul its juvenile justice system, which has been particularly bad for African American teenagers who get in trouble there. The aim is to keep low-level offenders out of juvenile lockups and adult criminal court, and build up community programs that rehabilitate them. Similar efforts are already happening in cities like Washington D.C., Chicago and New York. Federal officials in 2009 had launched an investigation into Tennessee’s justice system, and found that black teenagers were twice as likely as white teenagers to be detained and sent to adult criminal court for minor infractions. In October, the Justice Department brought a lawsuit against Lauderdale Country in Mississippi, saying its school system was running a “school-to-prison pipeline” in which students were jailed for talking back to teachers. In 2009, there were 1.5 million juvenile delinquency cases in the U.S. That is down from a peak of 1.9 million in 1997, according to the Justice Department. (The New York Times)

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