34 - The Role of Evaluation in Shaping Legislative Policy: An Update on Solitary Confinement Evaluation

Abstract Information: Juvenile solitary confinement does not reduce violence in youth facilities, but it does halt normal child development and leads to future negative consequences for youth such as long-term psychological damage. To limit the frequency and duration that youth spend in isolation the Nebraska Unicameral passed LB 230 in February 2020 which limited how staff could lawfully utilize juvenile room confinement. Among other restrictions, the Bill allowed room confinement only when youths are a danger to themselves or others (as opposed to administrative or disciplinary purposes) and it limited the time that youths can remain in confinement. The evaluation team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln aided the Nebraska ACLU in analyzing solitary confinement cases from January 2017 through December 2023. We monitored the progress of LB 230 in reducing instances of isolation and assessed the extent to which it reduced disparate impact of isolation for youth of color. The current presentation reports an update on data that we presented last year at the AEA conference. It includes quantitative data collected in the two years after the bill’s passage, that initially showed a significant decrease in isolation instances (1,832 and 1,114, respectively) but in the most recent collection year, the number of youths in room confinement has again started to increase to 2,487 approaching the number of instances prior to the bill’s passage (2,641). Regarding duration of isolation, the median hours in confinement have decreased from an average of 9.72 hours pre- LB 203 to an average median of 4.44 hours following the passage of the Bill. While the instances of room confinement may not have consistently decreased following LB 230, the likelihood that a youth is confined due to danger has steadily increased. This shows a positive trend in using confinement only for instances where youth are dangerous to themselves or others. Another analysis examined the effectiveness of the statute at reducing racial disparity in the use of juvenile isolation. As of the 2023 census, the rates of Nebraska youth identifying as White, Black, and Hispanic are 76.9%, 5.4% and 12.3%, respectively. That being said, in 2023, the likelihood that a random juvenile in isolation was White was 31%, Black 46% and Hispanic 18%. This shows that White youth are underrepresented in solitary confinement, while Black and Hispanic youth are overrepresented. Furthermore, the length of time that Black youth and Hispanic youth spent in solitary confinement (25 and 29 hours) in 2023 was significantly greater than the amount of time that White youth spent in isolation (14 hours). When the evaluation team began analyzing these data in 2017, the durations for Black, Hispanic and White youth were 37, 45 and 33 hours, showing that since the passage of LB 230, the overall durations have come down but much more so for White youth than for youth of color. The presenters will discuss the role that evaluators can and should play in monitoring government legislation and why scrutinizing public institutional records is critical for the success of long-term policy implementation.