Staff and children live together at the facility, which has shown success in keeping teens treated there from committing new crimes, said Renee Hagan, juvenile justice division director for Lighthouse Youth Services.

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Model programmes in juvenile-justice reform do exist: the Missouri Division of Youth Services, for example, uses a relatively low-cost, individualised, community-based approach with recidivism rates consistently hovering around 10%, one of the lowest in the country.

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