As Congress begins its new session, youth advocates are looking forward to the passage of a bipartisan bill that would strengthen protections for young people involved in the juvenile justice system. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2014, or S. 2999, introduced late last year by senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), aims to reauthorize and update the only federal law that sets national standards for how states administer juvenile justice.

That law, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), was passed in 1974 and has been updated and strengthened several times throughout its 40 years. In addition to establishing federal oversight for the states, it also set up core requirements for how states treat their youthful offenders – things like keeping kids out of adult prisons and addressing entrenched racial disparities – as well as a grant program to facilitate and incentivize states to meet those requirements. Since 2002, however, Congress has failed to reauthorize the law, and advocates say it’s long overdue for an update. “We think those standards should be substantially strengthened, and that they should really reflect more of the pressing issues of juvenile justice today,” says Liz […]