Removing all youth from adult jails will take a state-by-state, county-by-county and jail-by jail-approach, says a new report from by the Jail Removal Project at UCLA School of Law.

Using data from the the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) Census of Jails, the Annual Survey of Jails and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Census of Juvenile Residential Placements, the study found that no single approach will work for every jurisdiction or every jail.

Instead, a multi-faceted approach that focuses on youth in state, county and local facilities is needed, the report says.

Significantly, the number of youth (ages 17 and younger) housed in adult jails is declining.

There were 3,700 youth held in adult jails in 2016, down more than 50 percent from a peak of 7,600 youth at midyear 2010, and down 60 percent from a peak of 9,458 in 1999, the report noted.

However, researchers say that number should be “zero” due to the detrimental affects adult jails have on children.

“Incarceration has iatrogenic effects on youth, with additional research showing that adult environments increase recidivism beyond that of youth held in juvenile facilities,” they wrote.

Economists have also found that youth incarceration results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates, including for violent crimes.

One way to remove youth from adult prisons, according to the report, is to pass “raise the age” legislation in every state.

As of 2007, 14 states had excluded 16 or 17-year-olds from juvenile court jurisdiction simply because of their age.

Ten years later, only four states continue to exclude 17-year-olds from juvenile court jurisdiction based solely on their age – Georgia, Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin.

“The question is no longer whether states should stop automatically treating all 16-or 17-year-olds as adults, but when and how to raise the age,” the report stated.

Researchers suggested changing state laws on transferring youths between juvenile and adult courts.

“The presence of youth in adult jails appears to be driven largely by states which predominantly rely on transfer laws which have youth start in adult criminal court… with the greatest numbers in states where the jail law requires housing youth in adult jails,” the report says.

Researchers also proposed modifying state jail laws to prohibit placement of youth in adult jails and pressuring city and county officials to pass policies to remove youth from adult facilities.

A full list of their policy recommendations include the following:

Federal policymakers should strengthen, reauthorize, and adequately fund the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to remove youth from adult jails, promote alternatives to youth incarceration, and support critical juvenile justice system improvements.

State policymakers should update their laws to limit the number of youth housed in adult jails by raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, using judicial waiver instead of automatic or prosecutorial discretion mechanisms, and modifying their state jail laws or regulations to make juvenile facilities the default placement for youth.

County and city policymakers should immediately designate a local juvenile facility as the default placement for all youth who would otherwise be housed in an adult jail.

Sheriffs and jailers should work to identify a local juvenile facility to house youth who would otherwise be housed in their adult facility.

Juvenile detention and corrections officials should prepare to receive youth who are prosecuted in the adult system and evaluate existing policies and programming to determine whether any modifications are needed to accommodate a population with longer lengths of stay within their facility.

Prosecutor and public defender offices should actively support efforts to update state laws to make juvenile facilities the default placement for youth. Further, public defenders should help educate prosecutors and judges about the dangers of housing youth in adult jails and vigorously advocate to remove their youth clients from jails to more developmentally appropriate settings.

A full copy of the report can be found here.

This summary was prepared by TCR senior staff reporter Megan Hadley.