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.