Richard Ross // Juvenile In Justice

Photographer Richard Ross’ Juvenile In Justice is a project to document the placement and treatment of American juveniles housed by law in facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm them. The project is compiled from images of over 1,000 juveniles and administrators over 250 facilities in 30 states in the U.S, plus extensive information collected from interviews. The hope is that by seeing these images, people will have a better understanding of the conditions that exist. Children’s identities are always protected and faces are never shown.
Approximately 70,000 young people are in detention or correctional facilities every day in the United States. According to the American Correctional Association, the average cost to incarcerate a juvenile for a 9-12 month period is between $66,000 and $88,000. In California, the cost is $224,712.