Laura Abrams, professor of social welfare at UCLA Luskin, was a guest on a KQED Forum broadcast on the significant decline in juvenile incarceration from 2000-2020 in the United States. Abrams was part of an expert panel discussing shifts in the juvenile justice system and what has been learned about youth crime and incarceration during that time period. There is no one solution, magic or panacea, she pointed out. “Does treatment always work? No. Does punishment work? Not usually on its own,” said the author of two books on the subject: Everyday Desistance: The Transition to Adulthood Among Formerly Incarcerated Youth (2017) and Compassionate Confinement: A Year in the Life of Unit C (2013). “The goal here is to reduce the harmful effects and still promote accountability and have a system rooted in care and compassion for the young people in the system to help mitigate some of the detrimental effects,” she said.
