For years, Mississippi's youth legal system has treated young
Black people as criminals who need punishment instead of children who
need support and care.

Friend, 

For years, Mississippi's youth legal system has treated young
Black people as criminals who need punishment instead of children who
need support and care. Such a system has increasingly used
incarceration as the default response to youth crime, even though
youth arrests have declined significantly over the past 20 years.
Incarcerating children not only does incredible harm to them at the
most vulnerable time of their life, it also perpetuates more harm
later in life.

Mississippi's approach to youth justice is built on debunked
notions of Black criminality, inadequate funding for community
resources, and a school system that suspends a Black student every 15
minutes. This has produced persistent racial disparities and high
recidivism rates that expose the system's revolving door -
all at an expense that dwarfs what it would cost to educate these
children in Mississippi schools.

In our report, Only Young Once: The Case for Mississippi's
Investment in Youth Decarceration
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, the Southern Poverty Law Center makes the case for why the state
must develop a better model for its youth - one that is more
rehabilitative for children and cost-effective for taxpayers.

"Even with the long history of harm and legal scrutiny of
Mississippi's youth legal system, the state once invested in a
proven model of community-based alternatives to incarceration that was
much more beneficial in the lives of children," said Delvin
Davis, SPLC senior policy analyst and the report's author.
"Without a consistent commitment to the success of youth in
their communities and schools, Mississippi's youth legal system
can easily devolve to a time where abuse and litigation were
commonplace. The state must take action now to return to an investment
in resources that uplift, rather than incarcerate, Mississippi
youth."

Read the full report
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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

P.S. You can read our report on the Louisiana youth justice system,
Louisiana: Only Young Once: The Urgent Need for Reform of
Louisiana's Youth Justice System
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, here.

 


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