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Most every kid who is sent to jail is eventually sent home.

"Reentry is critical. Every year 100,000 people come in and every year 100,000 people go out," says New York City Department of Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro.

"Nobody knows what happens to them. This has been one of our concerns of our staff for years. The kids come and go, they come and go. They don't go back to school. Their schools are not taking them," says former Rikers Island teacher Donald Murphy.

And so the vast majority end up coming back to jail.

"Reentry planning should begin on day one. Unfortunately the current model is a far, far cry from that," says Juvenile Justice Project Director Gabrielle Prisco of the Correctional Association of New York.

"There’s no reason why we can’t have a really comprehensive program where from the day a student comes in he has a plan on what he's gonna do when he goes home. And not only is he figuring out how he's going to get his GED or high school credits, he’s going to know by the time he leaves where he's going to go to school, where he’s going to be living and where he can go to get a job," says former Rikers Island teacher Nicole Greaves.

But officials now seem to be getting the message. Starting in September, young inmates will work with counselors at intake to plan for their release.

"One of the major tenets of the reform is to get transitions right. And like I said the transition for the young person starts the minute they walk in our door," says Superintendent of Alternative Schools Cami Anderson.

When young inmates walk out, they will be referred to a new center where advisors will help them re-enroll in school. Officials say they also will coordinate with nonprofits, so all kids can connect with an organization that wants to help.

At Friends of Island Academy, only 10 percent of the young people it works with return to jail. Compare that to the rest of the city's young offenders where almost 90 percent of them end up back behind bars.

"When you take a kid by the hand from the inside, knowing from let's say the DOE, where school's going to be, where the next step is gonna be upon release that, A, that door opens for him and, B, there's an advocate that will hold him by the hand to make sure the door doesn't slam in his face," says Christine Pahigian of Friends of Island Academy.

For students like Devon Stephens, that helpful hand is making all the difference, so far.

"I came home, start getting back on track, but it took a lot of steps. When you go to jail, you don't have a lot of people behind you. I made it, I'm here, I'm still alive, not incarcerated, doin' what I'm doin'," says Stephens.