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The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons’

The Sunday Read: ‘What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons’

The Daily vor 1 Jahr

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44:28

When David Muhammad was 15, his mother moved from Oakland,
Calif., to Philadelphia with her boyfriend, leaving Muhammad in
the care of his brothers, ages 20 and 21, both of whom were
involved in the drug scene. Over the next two years, Muhammad was
arrested three times — for selling drugs, attempted murder and
illegal gun possession.

For Muhammad, life turned around. He wound up graduating from
Howard University, running a nonprofit in Oakland called the
Mentoring Center and serving in the leadership of the District of
Columbia’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Then he
returned to Oakland for a two-year stint as chief probation
officer for Alameda County, in the same system that once
supervised him.

Muhammad’s unlikely elevation came during a remarkable, if
largely overlooked, era in the history of America’s juvenile
justice system. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of young people
incarcerated in the United States declined by an astonishing 77
percent. Can that progress be sustained — or is America about to
reverse course and embark on another juvenile incarceration
binge?

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