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Justice for Wisconsin Youth

All kids deserve fair treatment in court. WCCF seeks to ensure that youth are treated through the juvenile court so their developmental needs can be better accounted for throughout the court and rehabilitative process.

Research shows that providing developmentally appropriate treatment significantly reduces future criminal activity. Incarcerating youth with adults increases the likelihood they will re-offend more quickly and more seriously.

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Recent News

How much does it cost for juvenile delinquency services in Wisconsin?  Wisconsin 2011 Act 32 required the Department of Corrections to gather information about juvenile justice services from around the state and compile into a report to the legislature.  With help from the counties, that information has been compiled in a report to the legislature released in early July.  The report, simply titled 2010 State and County Juvenile Justice Services, provides information on both state and county-level expenditures related to juvenile justice.  WCCF has created a Juvenile Justice Expenditures Snapshot of the key fiscal data, illustrating changes in funding, changes in the number of youth served, and that state Youth Aids funds account for less than one-half of juvenile justice related expenditures. 

Juvenile Detention Populations Continue to Decline. The number of youth admitted to the state’s juvenile detention centers continued to decline in 2011.  Data for 2012 is not yet available.  A brief snapshot of the data is in the End of Year Report 2011, which shows that (1) the number of youth in secure detention facilities on an average day declined slightly from 214 to 209 and is approximately 33% lower than it was just a few years ago – 2008; (2) Significant racial disparities continue to exist, with only 45% of youth admitted to detention centers identified as white; (3) Only one-quarter (on average) of the admissions to detention were for offenses categorized as crimes against persons, but that varied widely across facilities; (4) the average daily population was below 50% capacity for all but three of the 18 detention facilities. 

The State of Juvenile Justice in Wisconsin: What Do We Really Know? Check out this report that highlights the steady decline of juvenile arrests, youth waived to adult court, youth placed in correctional institutions, and youth placed in temporary detention centers over the past decade and includes policy recommendations going forward, including returning 17-year olds to the juvenile system and reinvesting savings in proven prevention and intervention strategies.

Check out the WisKids Count Data Snapshots on Juvenile Justice Trends in Select Counties in the table below. These snapshots are a follow up to the state data posted last year, and it includes juvenile arrest information through 2010 – for more recent arrest data by county, connect to the Office of Justice Assistance Crime and Arrest Reports. We continue to be concerned about racial disparities, and where that information is available it also is included.  Counties continue to make strides in reducing correctional placements while at the same time lowering arrest numbers.

More recent efforts to Raise the Age of juvenile jurisdiction in Wisconsin have included: (1) Introduction of AB703 in the spring of 2012 that proposed raising the juvenile court age to include first-time and non-violent 17 year olds.  This bill did not get introduced early enough to have a hearing in that session; (2) Introduction of AB732 in 2010 that proposed raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction to initially include misdemeanor cases (in 2011) and then all 17-year-old cases as of July 2012.  A hearing was held on the bill by the Assembly Committee on Corrections and Courts on April 1, 2010 but did not eventually get a vote. 

Governor’s Juvenile Justice Commission unanimously approves returning 17-year-olds to the juvenile system. Read the commission's statement related to Wisconsin's age of adult Criminal Responsibility.

WCCF Report: Risking Their Futures: Why trying nonviolent 17-year-olds as adults is bad policy for Wisconsin.  WCCF analyzed 1,000 17-year olds for over six years to track their recidivism rates after an adult conviction.  Overall 70 percent of the youth committed new crimes, and 80 percent of the youth who were jailed committed new crimes. Read the full report and WCCF press release. Governor’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparities in the Justice System recommends returning 17-year-olds to the juvenile justice system.  Read WCCF’s statement and read full report.

WCCF is collecting names of people and organizations who want to return 17-year-olds to the juvenile court system.  See details and add your name to the list.

Project Goals

Return 17-year-olds to the original jurisdiction of the juvenile courts;

Create a statutory preference for diverting non-violent juvenile offenders;

Improve data reporting and tracking capacity in the state by race and ethnicity of kids for all critical decision points in the juvenile justice process, arrest through incarceration;

Ensure that youth who do not commit crimes are not locked up with youth who do;

Modify statutes to ensure that non-adjudicated 17-year-olds are held pre-trial in a juvenile facility.
 

Project Staff

Questions? Contact Jim Moeser.