images that demonstrate America’s addiction to jailing children [View all]

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http://fusion.net/story/203703/child-incarceration-data-in-images/

Source: Annie E. Casey Foundation




No developed country jails children at the rate the U.S. does — and it’s not even close. South Africa, the nation with the second-highest incarceration rate for youths, still jails 5 times fewer children than the U.S. per 100,000 residents, according to the latest available survey from 2008.



Sources: Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention; bjs.gov

Roughly 54,000 kids are kept in American youth detention centers each night. Another 5,400 are cloistered in adult jails and prisons. There are no reliable numbers on how many children pass through the penal system in a given year; the federal government keeps statistics only on nightly bed counts.



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