MINNEAPOLIS -- The number of children confined in Minnesota's juvenile correctional facilities who haven't been charged with a crime has risen 28 percent over the last six years.

Children who aren't charged now account for a fifth of the population in the facilities.

State officials say that county child protection workers and local judges have nowhere else to send troubled children. But child advocates warn that correctional facilities are often more punitive than therapeutic and use disciplinary procedures no longer accepted in the mental health profession.

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