Speaking to The Washington Post on Wednesday, National Juvenile Defender Center Deputy Director Mary Ann Scali said obsolete juvenile justice policies are causing the wrong people to get caught up in the system, and are perpetuating juvenile crime as an unintended consequence. “Until we change policies that allow children to be persecuted for what’s normal conduct, it’s going to be really hard to make progress on these issues,” Scali said. “We have to be able to push back on those policies that were intended in the 1970’s to really prevent this wave of crime, but what they did, in fact, is they brought the wrong group of people back into the system.”
