Throughout Nationwide Youth Justice Motion Month, we recommit to remodeling our juvenile justice system, shifting its focus from punishment to help — from the previous to the longer term. By investing extra in all kids’s well being and well-being, our youth can construct a basis for full lives and our entire nation can profit from their limitless potential.
Each little one in America deserves a good shot via good colleges, protected communities, and equal alternatives. However some 36,000 younger People stay confined in juvenile residential amenities, too usually caught in unsafe environments, going through grownup fees or extreme sentences, and dwelling with untreated trauma that retains them from shifting ahead. Younger folks of coloration and younger folks with disabilities are disproportionately affected. We aren’t giving America’s kids the second possibilities they deserve. It’s time to rethink our system in an effort to higher attain the younger individuals who want us most with steerage and help to maintain them from coming in touch with the felony justice system within the first place.
My Administration has invested historic quantities in enhancing our youth justice system, rising funding for the Division of Justice’s Juvenile Justice Applications, which had seen sharp cuts. We now have additionally invested in colleges, mentorship, and job coaching packages, offering greater than $120 billion of American Rescue Plan funding to assist colleges safely reopen in the course of the pandemic, to rent extra academics and counselors, to launch afterschool and summer season tutoring packages that assist youngsters catch up, and to satisfy altering psychological well being wants. My Administration greater than doubled funding for Full-Service Group Colleges that help college students and their households outdoors the classroom with necessary providers like well being care and profession counseling. We now have launched a nationwide partnership to recruit 250,000 People to function tutors and mentors and known as on the Congress to fund new packages that will flip juvenile detention amenities into job-training facilities. As soon as younger folks are available contact with the justice system, we’re working to verify they’re handled pretty — boosting entry to attorneys who will combat for them and safely increasing alternate options to incarceration, together with intensive job coaching and mentorship packages. As soon as they go away the system, we’re serving to youth to search out housing, jobs, and different help. We’re additionally urging States to expunge, seal, or vacate juvenile data the place acceptable so extra younger People can transfer ahead and construct lives of dignity and alternative.
This month, I stand with youth justice advocates in urging States and communities throughout the nation to do extra to assist each little one understand their full promise. I’ll by no means stop working to strengthen America’s dedication to justice and constructing a system targeted on redemption and rehabilitation, particularly for our kids.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the US of America, by advantage of the authority vested in me by the Structure and the legal guidelines of the US, do hereby proclaim October 2022 as Nationwide Youth Justice Motion Month. I name upon all People to look at this month by taking motion to help our youth and by collaborating in acceptable ceremonies, actions, and packages of their communities.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I’ve hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, within the 12 months of our Lord two thousand twenty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the 2 hundred and forty-seventh.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
