A companion newsletter, InSites, focuses on work in specific places to highlight successful strategies on behalf of children and families. Summer 2001 issue . Overcrowding in detention is more than a housekeeping problem requiring the shuffling of mattresses. Children in crowded detention centers are more likely to be injured, spend less time in school and participate in fewer constructive programs. Because of pressures on the system that crowding creates, children in crowded facilities have fewer family visits, less opportunities to participate in religious activities and get sick more often.
Taxpayers also bear the burden of spiraling detention use.
And these amounts do not include new construction, capital improvements or related debt service. Figure 7 displays increases in detention costs between 1979 and 1988. Most importantly, inappropriate and unnecessary use of detention denies liberty to those least able to defend themselves.