In this Huffington Post blog, Shaena Fazal, YAP National Policy Director, urges politicians and the public to stop treating youth in conflict with the law like throwaway kids by confining them.  She points to new polling data that suggests the majority of Americans agree that youth can be taught to take responsibility for their actions without resorting to incarceration.  

"The time is right to focus our energy and resources on bringing and keeping young people safely home and abandoning the youth incarceration model that we know is costly, ineffective, harmful and racially unjust. It's an opportune time to make the case that young people in the juvenile justice system, who are mostly black and brown, are not throwaway kids despite a system that incarcerates and confines them as if they were."

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