Former Stoneleigh Fellow Adam Serlin, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, and Econsult Solutions, Inc. have published a new report outlining findings from a comprehensive socioeconomic report on Philadelphia’s youth justice system.
PHILADELPHIA (May 22, 2023) — District Attorney Larry Krasner joined community and non-profit partners on Monday to announce the findings of a comprehensive socio-economic report on the state of Philadelphia’s juvenile justice system. The analysis, Philadelphia’s Shifting Juvenile Justice Paradigm: An Economic Analysis, indicates that while spending on the system has continued to decline from fiscal years 2017 to 2021, the cost of support for system-involved youth has soared during the same time frame. The report also found that racial inequity continues to pervade our city’s juvenile justice system.These key findings strongly suggest that while youth accused of lower-level offenses are coming into contact with the juvenile court system far less than in previous years, the juvenile justice system in its current state urgently requires improvements in order to meet the needs of our city’s system-involved youth. The report also provides recommendations for both public and private sector juvenile justice stakeholders on what those improvements would look like and how to allocate taxpayer money to meet those goals.
