Voices for Virginia’s Children is the Commonwealth’s only independent, multi-issue child policy and advocacy organization. We champion public policies and legislation that achieve positive and equitable outcomes for young people.  

Voices oppose the new Guidelines for Determining the Length of Stay of Juveniles Indeterminately Committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice (“Guidelines”). The Guidelines ignore the overwhelming body of evidence on the harms of incarceration for young people. They discount years of progress in reducing both the direct care population in DJJ and overall rates of recidivism, and they are contrary to public safety. Moreover, the Guidelines have been developed without a comprehensive, data-driven study of their impact on public safety, DJJ operations and costs, and the physical and mental health of young people in direct care. We ask the Board of Juvenile Justice to delay implementation of these guidelines to allow for a comprehensive review of data and evidence and robust engagement with public stakeholders. 

While Virginia has made some advances in alternatives to youth incarceration, most young people committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice (“DJJ”) are still placed into “direct care,” meaning that they are confined to either a Juvenile Detention Center or to Bon Air, Virginia’s remaining maximum security youth prison. The new Guidelines will prolong periods of incarceration for youth, further cutting ties to family and community and interrupting the desistance process—all factors that endanger, rather than protect, public safety, while leading to additional trauma for young people. 

Long periods of incarceration are not effective at improving public safety; on the contrary, incarceration harms young people, leading to worse health outcomes, higher recidivism, and worse educational and employment outcomes. A 2021 National Institutes of Justice publication, Pathways to Desistance From Crime Among Juveniles and Adults, which reviewed extensive literature on desistance from crime, states that “longer prison sentences are not effective in promoting desistance from crime and reducing recidivism. In fact, confinement disrupts the desistance process in many ways, and it should be used only as a last recourse. When possible, jurisdictions should favor alternatives to confinement for both juveniles and adults.”  

Length of stay guidelines were significantly revised in 2015 to align with the latest research on youth justice. According to DJJ’s own analysis ahead of the 2015 revisions, commitments to DJJ for longer than 10-15 months were associated with worse rates of recidivism after release. Under new Guidelines, however, most indeterminately committed young people would have a “late” release date of 15 months or longer, and it is unclear that the Board has reviewed any newer data to show that longer stays will improve public safety. 

The new Guidelines reverse years of progress in public safety and youth justice and run contrary to the evidence that the 2015 guidelines—and, more broadly, the bipartisan supported DJJ Transformation—are working. Under the 2015 guidelines and DJJ’s shift to community-based alternatives to incarceration, recidivism has been consistently lower for young people placed on probation than for those committed to DJJ and later released to parole. To continue this improvement in public safety, DJJ should be doubling down on its goal of investing in community-based alternatives, not creating longer periods of incarceration.