Hundreds of young people under the age of 16 are incarcerated in the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice. The majority of these incarcerated youth do not pose a threat to society because they are convicted of minor, non-violent offenses. If these are minor crimes, why are these young people sent to juvenile centers? Well, rather than employing traditional disciplinary measures for minor decisions such as detention or counseling, faculty members are instead using drastic methods such as suspension, expulsion, and enforcement to punish young people. This pipeline of students out of school and onto the streets and into the juvenile correctional system is known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” This cycle deprives poor youth of meaningful opportunities such as an education and a future. There are inequalities in the education system, poverty and stereotypes, which play a major role in the choice of incarcerated people; and studies show that students of color receive harsher punishments than white students who engage in the same behavior. New York City has taken steps to reduce detention by implementing alternatives. These alternatives will ensure that youth receive "an appropriate level of supervision, reduce prison populations, save money because it costs millions of dollars to operate a detention center, and reduce crime and recidivism rates among young people. “To talk about recidivism rates, the system is useless and racist because detention centers do not produce so-called “corrected individuals.” Alternatively, it produces offenders by “imposing violent constraints on its inmates…” and therefore does not help stop recidivism. Recidivism can be defined as "a tendency to relapse into a previous state...... middle of paper ...... or responsibility for routine discipline of students and not police officers." They need to improve teacher training to resolve conflicts instead of calling the cops who inevitably have to take action once called. Unfortunately, the young men I visited every Sunday were already targeted by the School-to-Prison-Pipeline initiative. And when they leave prison, they will face many difficulties due to the stigma of incarceration and the difficulty of finding work and managing to live on their own. People don't want to hire ex-cons, and by not giving them the opportunity to work in a particular field that they may have learned in prison, they are forced to return to old habits. Since old habits most likely include illegal activities, an incarcerated person may be re-incarcerated and thus return to the juvenile center or, even worse, a real prison..