At his South San Francisco middle school, Christopher, then 13, did something he believed was mean and stupid but ultimately inconsequential: He grabbed a girl’s butt in the hallway. The girl, who was 14, told her mother, who in turn contacted the police. Christopher was soon charged with sexual battery, and after spending more than a month in juvenile hall, he took a plea deal of 90 days of probation with GPS monitoring, which meant he had to wear an ankle bracelet.

But Christopher’s probation kept getting extended whenever he violated its terms. Some infractions were more serious, like stealing an unattended bike. Others were technical violations, like being late for a 6 p.m. curfew. Christopher ended up wearing the ankle bracelet regularly until he was 18 years old.

In California, juvenile detention rates have been plummeting for more than a decade, due in part to declining crime rates and statewide “realignment” that has funneled kids into alternatives to lockup, like probation. But many of those juveniles are sent back to jail on technical violations. Nationally, nearly 1 in 4 kids in detention is there for noncriminal probation violations.

Christopher is now a computer science major and works part time. In January, five years after his original sentence, his ankle bracelet was removed.

Read Christopher's full story about his time in juvenile detention and probation at The Marshall Project.