August 6, 2019
Report Focuses on Role of Youth Services Commissions in Building Up New Jersey’s Kids Instead of Incarcerating Them
Newark – The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice today released Bring Our Children Home: Building Up Kids Through New Jersey’s Youth Services Commissions. A pdf of the report can be found here.
The report, the third in a series focusing on proposed solutions to New Jersey’s broken and racially discriminatory youth justice system, sheds light on New Jersey’s Youth Services Commissions, the county bodies responsible for planning and funding youth services ranging from prevention to reentry services. The report proposes that by strengthening our state’s Youth Services Commissions (YSC) structure through increased funding, community engagement, transparency, and accountability, we can help create a community-based system of care that will keep our young people in their communities and out of youth prison. To date, the State has failed to adequately prioritize and fund YSCs.