The state’s juvenile-detention system has been shrinking for years. Now, there's just one facility left: Bon Air.

In 2016, Marquez Jackson, then 18 years old, pleaded guilty in a northern Virginia court to second-degree murder charges related to his involvement in a robbery. He was sentenced to juvenile confinement until age 21, when he’s expected to be released on probation. Many months into his sentence, his circumstances still haven’t sunk in: “When I wake up, I just instantly think I’m waking up [at] home,” he told me recently. Instead, “home” for the next two years is Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center, the last youth-detention facility in the state of Virginia.

Jackson is one of 208 young people living at the center, located in the small town of Bon Air, a 20-minute drive from Richmond. As recently as 2005, the state had eight facilities like this one, housing more than 1,300 delinquent youth. But by 2017, after a series of reforms, that number had shrunk to one.

State leaders tout the shuttered facilities and declining population, but recidivism remains a problem.* According to data from the state Department of Juvenile Justice, in recent years more than 70 percent of Virginia's juvenile inmates were rearrested within three years of their release.** Stakeholders are now considering to what degree the nature of the facility is a contributing factor—from its isolated location to how prepared its young people are for reentry.

“It's not that you can't do good work here,” said Andy Block, who since 2014 has served as the juvenile-justice department’s director. “But the place itself and the design and the size and the location are barriers to doing good work.”

In recent months, I spent time with three young people, including Jackson, who’ve witnessed the state’s juvenile-justice system up close. Jackson, now 19, just began his second year at Bon Air. Darrynun Mabry, also 19, avoided time by participating in a new diversion program funded by Block’s department. And 21-year-old Zhacori Bates now lives on her own after spending two years in Bon Air. Taken together, their stories paint a picture of what life in the system is like—and what problems are outside the scope of existing reforms.

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