The Mississippi Department of Corrections shall establish a Youthful Offender Unit (“YOU”) at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. All youth ages seventeen (17) years of age and under and who are assigned to a Mississippi Department of Corrections prison shall be housed in the YOU, except that nothing in this section shall prohibit the department from housing a youth who is seventeen (17) years of age and under in a community work center or other environments that are less restrictive than a Mississippi Department of Corrections prison.
Youth ages seventeen (17) and under as prescribed in this section shall be housed in the YOU, separate from adult inmates. No individual who is over the age of nineteen (19) shall be housed in the YOU. The Commissioner of the Department of Corrections shall have discretion to house individuals who are eighteen (18) and nineteen (19) years of age and who have been classified as vulnerable in the YOU.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections shall provide youth housed at the YOU with the opportunity for the appropriate amounts of interactive, structured rehabilitative and/or educational programming, recreational and leisure activities outside of their cells on a daily basis, including weekends and holidays. The programming developed, as prescribed in this subsection shall, to the extent possible, be tailored to the developmental needs of adolescents.