Coming Home: Life After Juvenile Incarceration

Part One: Uncertainty

Release day is supposed to mean a child is going somewhere safer. But for some children leaving juvenile prison, going home means uncertainty. Where will I live? Can I go back to school? Who will hire me? How do I get to work without a car? What if my family relationships have changed? Who do I call when I need help? 

For some children, those practical questions come alongside fear about what is waiting for them outside. 

“Some of the things that go through their mind is, ‘What if I get out and somebody kills me?’” says Kisha Edwards, one of LCCR’s Youth Advocates. 

The grim reality is that children often return to the same poverty, violence, family instability and unmet mental health needs that existed before their incarceration, while also confronting problems created or worsened by the time they spent away. 

Housing is often the first and most urgent concern. A 2025 Justice Quarterly study found that young people formally processed through juvenile court were twice as likely to later report living on the streets as youth whose cases were handled informally, even after researchers accounted for detention and other factors associated with homelessness.

LCCR’s Reentry Specialist, Shon Williams, has seen children prepare for release with nowhere stable to go and little family support. This was a major reason he pushed LCCR to create its Second Chances Youth Reentry Program.  

Kisha sees the same need in her work. For older youth in particular, she worries about whether they’ll have housing stable enough that they will not be put out within three or six months. 

Resuming education can bring another shock. LCCR’s Learning Interrupted report (2022) documented serious educational failures inside Louisiana’s youth prison facilities. More than 75 percent of students failed to advance to the next grade because they lacked sufficient opportunities to earn credits. Problems transferring educational records could also force a child returning home to repeat classes they had already taken. 

LCCR Social Worker Emma Coen raises another issue that can stop children before they have even begun: getting the documents they need to function outside a facility. “If you don’t have your vital records, you do not exist,” she says.

Without a birth certificate or state ID, a young person can face barriers to employment, public benefits and other basic steps toward independence. Emma has also worked with children whose families left Louisiana around Hurricane Katrina and who now face additional hurdles obtaining records from other states. 

Mental health is another critical part of reentry, especially because many children enter the juvenile legal system already carrying significant mental health needs. Those needs do not disappear when a child is released. Returning home can also mean processing the stress and trauma associated with confinement while readjusting to family, school and community life. Without consistent treatment and trusted adults to turn to, children may be left trying to manage depression, anxiety, trauma or other mental health needs while also navigating everything that comes with starting over after incarceration. 

Families are adjusting, too. A child may have spent months or years away, and both the child and their relationships may have changed during that time. Parents may need help understanding what their child experienced while incarcerated and how to support them after they return. 

Kisha often finds herself helping children and parents understand one another. When a child returns to school, she also talks with teachers about what it means to return to a classroom after incarceration and asks them to give the student consideration while they adjust. The challenges Emma, Kisha and Shon all describe can quickly compound. A missing birth certificate can keep a child from completing a job application. Unstable housing can make it difficult to stay enrolled in school or keep a job. A break in mental health care can leave a family trying to respond to trauma without professional support. 

People who have never encountered the juvenile legal system sometimes assume reentry has little to do with them. “It may not affect you today. But it’ll affect you later,” Kisha says. 

Every child who comes home is returning to a family, a school, a neighborhood and a community. The questions waiting outside the facility can shape what happens next, from where a child sleeps to whether they can return to school, find work or get help when they need it. Louisiana has children coming home from juvenile prison every week. What is waiting for them when they arrive will shape how much opportunity they have to build the lives they have been imagining. 

In part two of this reentry series, we will explore how LCCR steps in and supports a child’s re-entry. Stay tuned for part two’s release in November.