No Juvenile Left Behind Bars

No Juvenile Left Behind Bars

Does the practice of putting juveniles behind bars make our cities safer? How does a juvenile who runs away from home end up behind bars? Does the act of putting juveniles behind bars build strong communities? Does caging up our children really solve anything?

It's possible and imperative to look through an abolitiionist lens to imagine a city without youths locked up behind bars. Abolition became part of the public lexicon about a century and a half ago in the battle to end slavery. The current context, abolition is still connected to that struggle. It's the political vision that seeks to eliminate the need for prisons, policing and surveillance by developing sustainable alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

With ongoing rampant abuse, the lack of meaningful resources and programs, poor health care and the lack of dignity and respect, our country's juvenile department of corrections centers have essentially become cages for youth. Using a cage as a solution is and never will be an appropriate response. Abolition is a very necessary vision because putting juveniles behind bars doesn't make communities safer. It costs taxpayers millions of dollars annually and doesn't provide real, sustainable options for juveniles. On the other hand, providing basic necessities like food, shelter and freedom creates the conditions for more genuine forms of security.

The call for abolition is in response to the (mis) use of the juvenile department of corrections facilities and the devastating effects detainment has on youth. It's a call to break the cycle of attempts at reform and harsh criminalization of youth - a call to ultimately shut down these senseless and inhumane juvenile department of corrections facilities.

Visualizing the closure of these juvenile department of correction facilities doesn't mean we assume that youth will never be violent or won't cross the boundaries set up by their communities. It means it is the responsibility of the communities themselves to be more invovlved and to create alternatives for dealing with the injuries youth inflict upon each other, in ways that sustain communities and families not by the separation of communities and families. Closing down juvenile department of correction facilities also means visualizing a city where resources are redistributed and youth are given a valid voice, quality education, health care and employment opportunities. It means breaking down the systemic barriers that prevent youth from having these needs met. Keeping communities and families whole is impossible by routinely removing people from it.

The abolition movement is especially relevant to Chicago since this city was the very first in the country to open a juvenile court. In the late nineteenth century, Jane Addams, with support of many citizen organizations, introduced a separate system that sought to meet the needs of youth through treatment and rehabilitation. Now, thirty years of the opening of the first juvenile court, each state in the nation had a juvenile system based on the same premise as Cook County's - that young juveniles needed to be treated as young people, not adults and deserved a chance at rehabilitation. But, as policies across the nation took on a more punitive approach, the conditions of the juvenile justice court in all cities tragically began to parallel the conditions around the country.

When the 1990's arrived, the nation witnessed a drastic rise in the already "tough-on-crime" attitude toward youth that changed the priorities of the juvenile justice system as a whole. School shootings, warnings of youth predators, and the media's persistant attention on juvenile crime stimulated political momentum to make the justice system "tougher" on youth.

When the end of this decade came, every state in the nation had changed their laws to make it easier to incarcerate youth in the adult system. This has become a widespread practice in our country, youth are routinely tried as adults and directly enter the adult justice system. The U.S. courts have also made more widespread use of temporary detention centers and juvenile department of correction facilities as state juvenile justice systems became more punitive.

The original genuine purpose of detention centers was to temporarily house youth who pose a high risk of re-offending before their trial or who are deemed likely not to appear for their trial. According to a recent report by the Justice Policy Institute, however, about 70 percent of youth in juvenile detention centers and/or juvenile department of correction facilities are there for non-violent crimes. The centers are now used to detain youths charged with property offenses, public order offenses, technical probation violations, or status offenses (example: running away or breaking curfew). It also places youth there who are awaiting transfer to group homes or alternative means of rehabilitation.

If we look at this more closely, the act of detention of any kind can and does increase recidivism, pull youth deeper into the juvenile and criminal justice system and harm the employment, health and education of formerly detained youth. There is an alarming rate of the country's youth that are at this moment incarcerated.

In Cook County the JTDC, informally referred to as the Audy Home, is no exception. As of this post, there are approximately 400 youth, mostly youth of color. These juveniles are between the age of 11 and 18 which are locked up in the CCJTDC. The winter of 2005, an extensive review was conducted of the detention center to examine the health, saftey and legal rights of youth in detention. This investigation found that these juveniles were, in fact, being abused by staff, staff members setting up fights between kids, patronage-based hiring, and unacceptable health conditions.

This center is now the subject of a lengthy and expensive lawsuit brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union. In spite of very long lists of recommendations for changes, sufficient improvements at the CCJTDC haven't been made. The fall of 2006, an organization is working for corrections reform, John Howard Association of Illinois, released media reports highlighting similar disturbing health and safety conditions existing at the center. Most youth in these centers and department of correction facilities have experienced a great deal of violence in their lives and the condition they are being held in is one more act of violence against them.

The injustice lies not only in the misues of these detention centers and department of justice facilities but also in the very use of it as a way to control youth. Several different parties from the government to human rights groups, agree that there are serious problems at these detention centers and department of justice facilities and that drastic changes are needed. At any rate, the abolitionist perspective challenges not only the existence of these problems but the notion that it is never okay to put youth in cages. The vision to rebuild communities and to continue the work to provide viable options for youth.

Juvenile Justice and Does it Work? Part 3

Juvenile Justice and Does it Work?

Getting Smart On Crime

Isn't it time we get smart on crime? Incarceration will always have a place in our criminal justice system, but for many juvenile offenders, prevention and treatment are far more effective and a whole lot less expensive.

A study in 2006 in Washington State concluded that there are many altenatives to incarceration. There is drug treatment, cognitive-bheavioral therapy and job training - effectively lowering crime rates, taxpayers saving thousands of dollars for every participant. Family therapy and aggression-replacement training for juvenile offenders which yielded even greater savings. Juvenile Justice Does it Work? Do you still think it works?

There is a study by the RAND Corporation which concluded that every dollar spent on drug treatment for cocaine users yields savings of $7.46 in reduced crime and lost productivity. Other studies have found similarly drastic results from investments in treatment.

Last December, two state Supreme Court Justices wrote to Barack Obama, then president-elect, urging major change in state and federal sentencing practices, to reduce US from relying on incarceration. As of the present day, the justices have concluded, "we use prisons as addicts use drugs." Like any other unhealthy dependence, our national addiction to juvenile justice and putting children behind bars will be tough to beat. But, it's the right thing and the smart thing to do.

Does the juvenile justice system work? I am not alone to have my doubts.

Juvenile Justice and Does it Work? Part 2

Juvenile Justice and Does it Work

Unless Juveniles Think They'll Get Caught, It's Not a Deterrent.

Now I am not saying that incarceration or punishment is entirely irrelevant to crime control. Deterrence do work, evidence confirms that people who believe a given behavior will lead to dire consequences are less likely to engage in that kind of behavior.
Can a juvenile possibly know the extent of such consequences. Juvenile Justice and Does it Work....Really?

The enormous majority of research, however, concludes that deterrence is mainly a function of the perceived likelihood of getting caught and receiving some kind of punishment, not the severity of the punishment one will receive if caught. Let me put it this way, you get more deterrence by increasing the certainty, rather than the severity of punishment.

This makes intuitive sense. Juveniles who don't believe they will be apprehended at all are unlikely to be thinking about the punishment they will receive if they are caught. I would venture to say, Juveniles are not sufficiently familiar with the minutiae of sentencing law to have more than the vaguest idea whether their crime could get them six months of probation or ten years in prison. So, are we really sure about the answer to the question. Juvenile Justice and Does it Work?

Now let's look at this and contemplate where are laws are really going and do you really think this is the best direction for our juveniles? The facts are, the U.S. sentencing policy for the last 20 years has focused largely on increasing the severity of punishment. This has gone to absurd and inhumane lengths, such as California's "three strikes law", upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, which resulted in a sentence of 25 years to life for stealing three golf clubs, and a sentence of 50 years to life for shoplifting videotapes.

This "get tough" movement which made mandatory minimum sentences, "three strikes" laws, abolition of parole, has given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. More than 2.3 million people behind bars on any given day and 1 in 11 convicted prisoners serving a life sentence. Does our Justice System really work, whether Juvenile or not?

There is very little evidence that this bloated population in our prisons - which is costing us about $60 billion a year to maintain is making us any safer than the far lower incarceration rates that is factually found in Canada, the United Kingdom and other Western democracies. Juvenile Justice Does it Work? With these facts, do you really think it does?

Juvenile Justice and Does it Work? Part 1

Juvenile Justice and Does It work?

Let's step back and look at the whole picture for a minute. If we just sort through some facts, things we already know we just might be able to determine and answer the question Juvenile Justice and Does It work?

The fact is, American and Canadian societies are very much alike in a variety of ways. We eat the same kinds of foods, watch similar movies, enjoy listening to the same kind of music and we visit across the border. But these considerable similarities do conceal profound differences. Now, let's take a look at the U.S. incarceration rate which is more than six times as high as Canada's and the United States does have a homicide rate of more than three times as high as its northern neighbor-Canada. Again, I beg to ask, Juvenile Justice and Does it Work?

Oh, there are those who argue that incarceration is the answer to the crime problems yet they are hard-pressed to explain why it is, that Canada can incarcerate a much smaller proportion of its people and still and still have an extremely low homicide rate. However, we don't need to go acrossed the border to find clear evidence that crime doesn't necessarily go down when incarceration goes up. Juvenile Justice and Does it Work, doesn't seem to be looking too good right now.

Alright, now let's take a look at Louisiana's incarceration rate which is more than six times the rate in Maine. Now, if incarceration worked as a crime control stragtegy, we would expect Louisiana to have less crime than Maine.

Well, folks, the fact is, it's just the opposite. You are three times as likely to have your vehicle stolen, five times as likely to be robbed and about nine times as likely to be a homicide victim in Louisiana as you would be in Maine. Now, listen to this, Wisconsin locks up twice as many people as Minnesota, but still has a 50 percent higher homicide rate than its neighbor to the west. There are so many more comparisons like this, but the real point is, more incarceration does not mean less crime. Truly, you must ask yourself, Juvenile Justice and Does it Work? Is there a better way, a better answer?