State Youth Detention Centers Face Controversy and Call for Closure

As states from California to Maine consider drastic changes to youth detention centers, New Hampshire is grappling with its own facility that has been rocked by abuse allegations from years past, reports the Associated Press. The state’s Legislature will vote Thursday on a proposed state budget that would close the sprawling facility — housing fewer than 20 children on a campus built for 144 — by March 2023 and replace it with a new, 18-bed center. The move is part of a national trend, with states like Maine, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Vermont closing, consolidating, or considering next steps amid high facility maintenance costs, incidents of misconduct and abusive practices, and mismanagement.

States’ efforts would get a boost under the budget proposal released last month by President Joe Biden, which calls for increasing the overall youth justice budget from $359 million to $796 million and spending $100 million to support efforts to close detention facilities and invest in community alternatives to support youth. “There’s this sense that we know we’re not doing what we need to do for kids when we lock them up, and we’re not giving them the kind of support and focus on their families and all the circumstances that help them become more thriving adults,” said Vidhya Ananthakrishnan, director of youth justice initiatives for The Justice Lab at Columbia University. “It’s a question of what that actually looks like. That’s the thing people are starting to grapple with.”