Youth incarceration in the United States
Encyclopedia
Through the juvenile court
s and the adult criminal justice system
, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, a reflection of the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2002, approximately 126,000 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. Approximately 500,000 youth are brought to detention centers in a given year.
The system that is currently operational in the United States was created under the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
.
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act called for a "deinstitutionalization" of juvenile delinquents
. It required that states holding youth within adult prisons for status offenses remove them within a span of two years (this timeframe was adjusted over time). The act also provided program grants to states, based on their youth populations, and created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP).
Through reauthorization amendments, additional programs have been added to the original Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. The following list highlights a few of these additions:
1977 - Programs were developed to assist children with learning disabilities
who entered the juvenile justice system.
1984 - A new missing and exploited children program was added.
1984 - Strong support was given to programs that strengthened families.
1988 - Studies on prison conditions within the Indian justice system.
1990 - The OJJDP began funding child abuse
training programs to instruct judicial personnel and prosecutor
s.
1992 - A juvenile boot camp program was designed to introduce delinquent youth to a lifestyle of structure and discipline.
1992 - A community prevention grants program gave start-up money to communities for local juvenile crime prevention plans.
s and prosecutors (at a rate of 85%) than by judges, the people originally endowed with the responsibility for such discretion.
The decreasing distinction between how youth and adults are tried in the criminal justice system has caused many within the legal system, as well as other activists and organizers, to be critical of the juvenile justice system.
The “tough on crime” attitudes of these recent legislative events reflect the popularity of such a stance in public opinion
. This is true of the majority of criminal justice reform policies of the past couple decades, including California’s
infamous Three Strikes Law
.
Criminal justice—-and in particular juvenile justice—-reform battles are often fought in the court of public opinion. The popular news media
have played a crucial role in promoting the myth of a new generation of young “super-predators” threatening the public. Despite documented decreases in youth crime—especially in violent crime indicating a 68% decline in youth homicide
in the 1990s — overall media coverage of youth crime is increasing. Despite evidence to the contrary, 62% of respondents to a 1999 survey on youth delinquency believed that youth crime was up. Advocates for juvenile justice reform focus considerable attention on amending public opinion and adjusting the gap between what threats people perceive and the reality of youth offending.
, identify three main markers of the system for critique and reform. They hold that the juvenile justice system is unjust, ineffective, and counter-productive in terms of fulfilling the promise of the prison system, namely the protection of the public from violent offenders.
Unjust: Critics of the juvenile justice system believe that the system is unfairly stacked against minority
youth. Minority youth are disproportionately represented in incarcerated populations relative to their representation in the general population. A recent report from the National Council on Crime and delinquency found that minority youth are treated more severely than white youth at every point of contact with the system—from arrest, to detention
, to adjudication
, to incarceration
—even when charged with the same crime. In 1995, African American
youths made up 12% of the population, but were arrested at rates double those for Caucasian
youths. The trend towards adult adjudication has had implications for the racial make-up of the juvenile prison population as well. Minority youth tried in adult courts are much more likely to be sentenced
to serve prison time than white youth offenders arrested for similar crimes.
Harmful to youth: Juvenile detention facilities are often overcrowded and understaffed. The most infamous example of this trend is Cheltenham center in Maryland
, which at one point crowded 100 boys into cottages sanctioned for maximum capacity of 24, with only 3-4 adults supervising. Young people in these environments are subject to brutal violence from their peers as well as staff, who are often overworked, underpaid and under stress. The violence that incarcerated youth experience—fights, stabbings, rapes—is well known to those who work in the criminal justice system, and those who oppose it.
Congregating delinquent youth has a negative impact on behavior—it actually serves to make them more deviant
and more of a threat to themselves and others. Social scientists
call the phenomenon “peer delinquency training”, and have found significantly higher levels of substance abuse
, school difficulties, delinquency, violence, and adjustment difficulties in adulthood for offenders detained in congregated settings versus those that were offered treatment in another setting.
Incarceration can aggravate mental illness. According to detention center administrators who testified to United States Congress
in a 2004 Special Investigation by the House of Representatives
, many incarcerated youths could have avoided incarceration had they received mental health treatment. Detention centers do not promote normal cognitive
and emotional development. A recent report indicated that for up to one-third of incarcerated youth suffering from depression, the onset of depression occurred after their transfer to a detention center. These youth face a greater risk of self-injury and suicide
. Researchers have found that incarcerated youth engage in self-injurious behaviors at a rate two to four times higher than the general youth population. Furthermore, prison administrative policy often intensifies the risk by responding to suicidal threats in ways that endanger the detainees, such as putting them in solitary confinement
.
Detained youth with special needs
often fail to return to school upon release. Among those young students receiving remedial education
during their detention, roughly 43% do not return to school. Among those that do re-enroll, between two-thirds to three-quarters drop out within a year. Not only does this pose a serious threat to the ex-offender’s well-being—high school drop-outs face high unemployment, poor health, shorter life spans
, and low income—it also poses a threat to public safety. According to the United States Department of Education
, high school drop-outs are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than High School Graduates.
Formally incarcerated youth face less success in the labor market
. On average youth that have spent any amount of time in a youth detention facility work 3–5 weeks less than the average employee over the course of a year. Their interrupted education makes them less competitive, and their experience of incarceration may change them into less stable employees. This lack of success in the workplace is a threat to personal well-being as well as to communities whose youth are incarcerated in large numbers, such as African American
s.
Ineffective: Studies indicate that incarcerating young offenders is not the most effective way of curbing delinquency and reducing crime. The relationship between detention of young offenders and the rate of overall youth criminality is not evident. A study of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
's arrest data for the 1990s reveals that the rise in detention was unrelated to crime rates. That is, detention as a tactic of controlling young offenders has little to nothing to do with the rate of crime or the “threat” that youth pose to the public.
While there may be an individual need to incarcerate violent or high-risk youth, most of the young people in prisons, jails and detention centers today—up to 70%—are serving time for nonviolent offenses.
Not all delinquent youth are incarcerated—in fact, as many as one-third of all Americans might engage in delinquent behavior at some point in their youth. But those that are detained or imprisoned are less likely to grow out of their delinquency than those that are not. Criminologists
recognize a natural process of desistance called “aging out” of delinquency, through which a person desists their delinquent behavior through maturation and experience. Detaining or incarcerating youth can interrupt or slow down the aging out process, resulting in a longer period of delinquency.
The harm done to the emotional, mental and social development of incarcerated youth, combined with the separation from family and community and the congregation of offenders makes previous incarceration the leading indicator for a repeat offence among young offenders. It is a greater predictor even than weapon possession, gang membership and bad relationships with parents. What these studies tell us is that, far from increasing the public safety and curbing youth crime, detaining and incarcerating young offenders is actually leading to more criminality among youth, and more serious crimes.
As the country grapples with the impact of a growing recession, a cost-benefit analysis of our criminal justice system is especially germane. The cost effectiveness of detention and incarceration scores very low compared with alternative approaches to youth delinquency in a cost-benefit analysis
. A 2002 government commissioned study in Washington State revealed that for every one dollar spent on juvenile detention systems, a benefit return of $1.98 in terms of reduced crime and cost of crime to taxpayers was achieved. They found benefit returns ranging from $3.36- $13 for a series of detention alternatives. This study indicates that alternative models are more effective in reducing youth offending in practical and economic terms.
, educators, artists, and youth working on specific legislative and localized initiatives.
Movement goals include shutting down particularly bad prisons and detention centers, demanding better treatment for youth in the system, providing and demanding better representation for young people in court, affecting legislation to curb youth incarceration, working to abolish arrest warrants for young people, and promoting alternatives to incarceration.
There are national organizations and local ones, opposition from inside the criminal justice system and from outside of it. The movement is diverse in many ways, and is difficult to encapsulate in a single entry. Listed below are some examples of movement struggles:
was one of the nation's most infamous prisons for boys. Started in 1872 as the House of Reformation for Colored Boys, Cheltenham was home to a wildly overrepresented population of minority youth
. But the racial injustice
inside the notorious prison was not what ultimately led to its demise.
The conditions at Cheltenham were deplorable. Overcrowded and understaffed, Cheltenham was also flagged by fire safety
inspectors as one of the least safe buildings in the state. The antiquated prison structure—each cell had to be individually unlocked, and at times prison staff could not present keys to some cells—was also the site of an enormous amount of brutality and violence.
Local citizens in the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition developed the Maryland Campaign to Close Cheltenham in 2001. The campaign involved parents of incarcerated youth, youth activists, and faith leaders from across the state. Through a targeted media campaign to shift public opinion, the Campaign succeed in passing legislation
through the annual budget to phase out and close Cheltenham, and to increase state spending on community-based alternative programs for youth offenders.
had been open for only three years when it was first sued by the United States Department of Justice
(in collaboration with local activists in the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana) for violating the civil rights of youth held in its confines—marking the first time in U.S. history that the federal government has actively sued a state over the conditions of its juvenile detention facilities.
That same year the filthy conditions, brutal violence and chronic understaffing earned the center a citation as "the worst in the nation." In 1999, even after the federal government
had taken over partial responsibility for improving conditions, things were so unsafe for the youth that the staff of the center walked out, leaving 400 boys completely unsupervised.
Youth and adult activists appealed to the state legislature
to shut down the prison once and for all. But their aspirations didn't stop with the abolition
of one prison—they sought to redefine the juvenile justice system in the state, to change it from one based almost entirely on incarceration and punishment to a new system focusing on community-based alternatives to incarceration.
In 2003 the state of Louisiana
became nationally recognized for its leadership in reforming a broken juvenile justice system. With the passage of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003 (Act 1225), then Governor Kathleen Blanco
and the Louisiana State Legislature
ushered in a period of reform in which the notoriously brutal Tallulah prison for youth was shut down, conditions were improved in other abusive youth prisons throughout the state, and a commitment was made to both the increased use of alternatives to incarceration for youth and to revamping secure care prisons to be small, therapeutic
facilities that were regionalized to keep children closer to their families.
Before the passage of Act 1225, over two thousand children were held in prison in Louisiana. Today the system holds just over 500 children state-wide. In 1998 the rate of recidivism
, or children returning to prison after release, was 56% as compared to 11% today. This decrease in the number of children incarcerated has contributed to an increase in public safety
.
residents passed Proposition 21
, a multi-faceted proposition designed to be tough on youth crime, incorporating many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice jurisdiction
.
Opponents to this law included activists from Californians for Justice, Critical Resistance
, the Youth Force Coalition, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
, and the American Civil Liberties Union
. Advocates in the ACLU challenged many portions of the law, including a provision automatically sentencing youth 14–17 years old in adult court. This portion of the law was struck down by the California Courts of Appeal in 2001.
" is not defined in law or regulation; nor is there a single widely accepted practice definition. The United States Department of Education
, National Center for Education Statistics, defined zero tolerance as "a policy that mandates predetermined consequence
s or punishment
s for specified offenses". The purpose of zero-tolerance policies, according to their proponents, is to send a message that certain kinds of behaviors are not tolerable on school grounds. About 94% of public schools in the United States have zero-tolerance policies for guns; 91% for other weapons; 88% for drugs; 87% for alcohol and 79% for tobacco.
Opposition to zero-tolerance policies, especially at the local level, focus on critiques including charges that the program is discriminatory
, unconstitutional
, harmful to schools and students, ineptly implemented, and provides harsh punishment (suspension
of education) for minor offenses (possession of tobacco).
A few infamous cases have been used by opposition groups, such as Amnesty International
, to further their case against the policy. The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice released a story in 2003 about a 13 year old girl in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
arrested and detained for 5 weeks for possession of what was thought to be marijuana, but turned out to be oregano
. The zero-tolerance practice in Illinois of sending any youth charged with drug crimes within 1,000 feet of any school or public housing project directly to adult court has resulted in the largest racial disparity in the country—over 99% of youth affected by this policy were minority
youth.
Opposition to zero-tolerance policies nationwide and locally is broad and growing. Organizational leadership has been provided nationally by Amnesty International
and the American Bar Association
, who has officially opposed such policies since 2001.
to end youth incarceration believe that the best way to mitigate the impact of detention and incarceration on our youth is to reduce the number of youth that pass through the system. By providing credible alternatives to incarceration, this portion of the movement provides opportunities for communities to treat, rather than punish, young offenders—much the way that the juvenile justice system was founded to do.
The largest actor in this segment of the movement is the JDAI- The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. The JDAI is a private-public partnership being implemented nationwide, with pilot programs in California
, Oregon
, New Mexico
and Illinois
. Their goal is to make sure that locked detention is used only when absolutely necessary.
Their approach is multi-faceted, including multiple emphases on: Inter-governmental collaboration; reliance on data; creation and implementation of objective admissions screening for detention facilities; expedited case processing to reduce pretrial detention; improved handling of “special cases”; express strategies to reduce racial disparities; improving the conditions of confinement; and researching, testing, and endorsing alternatives to confinement.
Alternatives to confinement are sensitive to family and culture, and treatment is often built around the strengths of the youth and their families. Alternative treatment methods might include any combination of the following, as well as other approaches: diversion
, mentorship
, Aggression Replacement Training
, Functional Family Therapy, and multisystemic therapy
.
The JDAI has produced some promising results from their programs. Detention center populations fell by between 14% and 88% in JDAI counties over the course of 7 years 1996-2003). These same counties saw declines in juvenile arrests (an indicator of overall juvenile crime rates) during the same time period ranging from 37-54%.
Juvenile court
A juvenile court is a tribunal having special authority to try and pass judgments for crimes committed by children or adolescents who have not attained the age of majority...
s and the adult criminal justice system
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
, the United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, a reflection of the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2002, approximately 126,000 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. Approximately 500,000 youth are brought to detention centers in a given year.
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
| Count | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | 90,771 | 14,284 | 105,055 |
| 1999 | 93,114 | 14,553 | 107,667 |
| 2001 | 89,271 | 15,142 | 104,413 |
| 2003 | 82,065 | 14,590 | 96,655 |
| 2006 | 79,095 | 13,759 | 92,854 |
| 2007 | 75,101 | 11,826 | 86,927 |
The system that is currently operational in the United States was created under the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 is a United States federal law providing funds to states that follow a series of federal protections, known as the "core protections," on the care and treatment of youth in the justice system...
.
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act called for a "deinstitutionalization" of juvenile delinquents
Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...
. It required that states holding youth within adult prisons for status offenses remove them within a span of two years (this timeframe was adjusted over time). The act also provided program grants to states, based on their youth populations, and created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is an office of the United States Department of Justice and a component of the Office of Justice Programs....
(OJJDP).
Through reauthorization amendments, additional programs have been added to the original Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. The following list highlights a few of these additions:
1977 - Programs were developed to assist children with learning disabilities
Learning disability
Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...
who entered the juvenile justice system.
1984 - A new missing and exploited children program was added.
1984 - Strong support was given to programs that strengthened families.
1988 - Studies on prison conditions within the Indian justice system.
1990 - The OJJDP began funding child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
training programs to instruct judicial personnel and prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
s.
1992 - A juvenile boot camp program was designed to introduce delinquent youth to a lifestyle of structure and discipline.
1992 - A community prevention grants program gave start-up money to communities for local juvenile crime prevention plans.
Types of incarceration
Some inmates of juvenile system are or were "status offenders," children who committed acts that are not crimes for adults, but can get juveniles in trouble with the law. Status offenses include consensual sexual acts, truancy from school, smoking cigarettes, curfew violations, drinking alcohol, running away from one's residence, chronic disobedience of parents and/or guardians and/or other authority figures, waywardness, and ungovernability.Current trends
Recently, forty seven states have made it easier to be tried as an adult, calling attention to the growing trend away from the original model for treatment of juveniles in the justice system. A recent study of pretrial services for youth tried as adults in 18 of the country’s largest jurisdictions found that the decision to try young offenders as adults was made much more often by legislatorLegislator
A legislator is a person who writes and passes laws, especially someone who is a member of a legislature. Legislators are usually politicians and are often elected by the people...
s and prosecutors (at a rate of 85%) than by judges, the people originally endowed with the responsibility for such discretion.
The decreasing distinction between how youth and adults are tried in the criminal justice system has caused many within the legal system, as well as other activists and organizers, to be critical of the juvenile justice system.
The “tough on crime” attitudes of these recent legislative events reflect the popularity of such a stance in public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
. This is true of the majority of criminal justice reform policies of the past couple decades, including California’s
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
infamous Three Strikes Law
Three strikes law
Three strikes laws)"are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which require the state courts to hand down a mandatory and extended period of incarceration to persons who have been convicted of a serious criminal offense on three or more separate occasions. These statutes became...
.
Criminal justice—-and in particular juvenile justice—-reform battles are often fought in the court of public opinion. The popular news media
News
News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
have played a crucial role in promoting the myth of a new generation of young “super-predators” threatening the public. Despite documented decreases in youth crime—especially in violent crime indicating a 68% decline in youth homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
in the 1990s — overall media coverage of youth crime is increasing. Despite evidence to the contrary, 62% of respondents to a 1999 survey on youth delinquency believed that youth crime was up. Advocates for juvenile justice reform focus considerable attention on amending public opinion and adjusting the gap between what threats people perceive and the reality of youth offending.
Profiles of Youth in Custody
A report by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention and U.S. Department of Justice, “Survey of Youth in Residential Placement: Youth’s Needs and Services," used data from more than 7,000 youth in custody gathered during interviews. The report's findings include: 70% of youth in custody reported that they had “had something very bad or terrifying” happen to them in their lives. 67% reported having seen someone severely injured or killed; 26% of those surveyed said felt as if “life was not worth living," and 22% reported having tried to commit suicide at some point in their lives; 84% of the youth surveyed said they had used marijuana, compared to a rate of 30% among their peers in the general population; 30% reported having used crack or cocaine, compared with only 6% in the general population. The report noted a significant gap between the profiles of boys and girls, with girls often reporting more pronounced difficulties: 63% of girls reported having problems with anger, whereas 47% of boys did; 49% of girls reported having hallucinatory experiences, whereas only 16% of boys did; 37% of girls reported having suicidal thoughts and feelings, whereas only 18% of boys did. Facilities that treat such youth also were shown to be inadequate in some core areas, according to the Justice Department. Among youth who reported four or more recent substance-related problems, only about 60% said they had been provided with substance abuse counseling in their current facility. Many youth in custody reported having attention problems and difficulties in school. Once in custody, only 45% report spending 6 hours a day or more in school, meaning that their learning time is below that of the general population.Criticism of juvenile justice
Critics of the juvenile justice system, like those in the wider prison abolition movementPrison abolition movement
The prison abolition movement seeks to abolish prisons and the prison system. The movement advocates for the abolition of prisons and the prison system on the basis of it being ineffective. Prison abolitionists present a broad critique of the modern criminal justice system, which they believe to...
, identify three main markers of the system for critique and reform. They hold that the juvenile justice system is unjust, ineffective, and counter-productive in terms of fulfilling the promise of the prison system, namely the protection of the public from violent offenders.
Unjust: Critics of the juvenile justice system believe that the system is unfairly stacked against minority
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
youth. Minority youth are disproportionately represented in incarcerated populations relative to their representation in the general population. A recent report from the National Council on Crime and delinquency found that minority youth are treated more severely than white youth at every point of contact with the system—from arrest, to detention
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
, to adjudication
Adjudication
Adjudication is the legal process by which an arbiter or judge reviews evidence and argumentation including legal reasoning set forth by opposing parties or litigants to come to a decision which determines rights and obligations between the parties involved....
, to incarceration
Incarceration
Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime .People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of...
—even when charged with the same crime. In 1995, African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
youths made up 12% of the population, but were arrested at rates double those for Caucasian
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
youths. The trend towards adult adjudication has had implications for the racial make-up of the juvenile prison population as well. Minority youth tried in adult courts are much more likely to be sentenced
Sentence (law)
In law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime...
to serve prison time than white youth offenders arrested for similar crimes.
Harmful to youth: Juvenile detention facilities are often overcrowded and understaffed. The most infamous example of this trend is Cheltenham center in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, which at one point crowded 100 boys into cottages sanctioned for maximum capacity of 24, with only 3-4 adults supervising. Young people in these environments are subject to brutal violence from their peers as well as staff, who are often overworked, underpaid and under stress. The violence that incarcerated youth experience—fights, stabbings, rapes—is well known to those who work in the criminal justice system, and those who oppose it.
Congregating delinquent youth has a negative impact on behavior—it actually serves to make them more deviant
Deviance (sociology)
Deviance in a sociological context describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules as well as informal violations of social norms...
and more of a threat to themselves and others. Social scientists
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
call the phenomenon “peer delinquency training”, and have found significantly higher levels of substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
, school difficulties, delinquency, violence, and adjustment difficulties in adulthood for offenders detained in congregated settings versus those that were offered treatment in another setting.
Incarceration can aggravate mental illness. According to detention center administrators who testified to United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
in a 2004 Special Investigation by the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, many incarcerated youths could have avoided incarceration had they received mental health treatment. Detention centers do not promote normal cognitive
Theory of cognitive development
Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...
and emotional development. A recent report indicated that for up to one-third of incarcerated youth suffering from depression, the onset of depression occurred after their transfer to a detention center. These youth face a greater risk of self-injury and suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. Researchers have found that incarcerated youth engage in self-injurious behaviors at a rate two to four times higher than the general youth population. Furthermore, prison administrative policy often intensifies the risk by responding to suicidal threats in ways that endanger the detainees, such as putting them in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
.
Detained youth with special needs
Special needs
In the USA, special needs is a term used in clinical diagnostic and functional development to describe individuals who require assistance for disabilities that may be medical, mental, or psychological. For instance, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International...
often fail to return to school upon release. Among those young students receiving remedial education
Remedial education
Postsecondary remedial education is a large and growing segment of higher education in the United States...
during their detention, roughly 43% do not return to school. Among those that do re-enroll, between two-thirds to three-quarters drop out within a year. Not only does this pose a serious threat to the ex-offender’s well-being—high school drop-outs face high unemployment, poor health, shorter life spans
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
, and low income—it also poses a threat to public safety. According to the United States Department of Education
United States Department of Education
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government...
, high school drop-outs are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than High School Graduates.
Formally incarcerated youth face less success in the labor market
Labour economics
Labor economics seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the market for labor. Labor markets function through the interaction of workers and employers...
. On average youth that have spent any amount of time in a youth detention facility work 3–5 weeks less than the average employee over the course of a year. Their interrupted education makes them less competitive, and their experience of incarceration may change them into less stable employees. This lack of success in the workplace is a threat to personal well-being as well as to communities whose youth are incarcerated in large numbers, such as African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s.
Ineffective: Studies indicate that incarcerating young offenders is not the most effective way of curbing delinquency and reducing crime. The relationship between detention of young offenders and the rate of overall youth criminality is not evident. A study of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
's arrest data for the 1990s reveals that the rise in detention was unrelated to crime rates. That is, detention as a tactic of controlling young offenders has little to nothing to do with the rate of crime or the “threat” that youth pose to the public.
While there may be an individual need to incarcerate violent or high-risk youth, most of the young people in prisons, jails and detention centers today—up to 70%—are serving time for nonviolent offenses.
Not all delinquent youth are incarcerated—in fact, as many as one-third of all Americans might engage in delinquent behavior at some point in their youth. But those that are detained or imprisoned are less likely to grow out of their delinquency than those that are not. Criminologists
Criminology
Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...
recognize a natural process of desistance called “aging out” of delinquency, through which a person desists their delinquent behavior through maturation and experience. Detaining or incarcerating youth can interrupt or slow down the aging out process, resulting in a longer period of delinquency.
The harm done to the emotional, mental and social development of incarcerated youth, combined with the separation from family and community and the congregation of offenders makes previous incarceration the leading indicator for a repeat offence among young offenders. It is a greater predictor even than weapon possession, gang membership and bad relationships with parents. What these studies tell us is that, far from increasing the public safety and curbing youth crime, detaining and incarcerating young offenders is actually leading to more criminality among youth, and more serious crimes.
As the country grapples with the impact of a growing recession, a cost-benefit analysis of our criminal justice system is especially germane. The cost effectiveness of detention and incarceration scores very low compared with alternative approaches to youth delinquency in a cost-benefit analysis
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost–benefit analysis , sometimes called benefit–cost analysis , is a systematic process for calculating and comparing benefits and costs of a project for two purposes: to determine if it is a sound investment , to see how it compares with alternate projects...
. A 2002 government commissioned study in Washington State revealed that for every one dollar spent on juvenile detention systems, a benefit return of $1.98 in terms of reduced crime and cost of crime to taxpayers was achieved. They found benefit returns ranging from $3.36- $13 for a series of detention alternatives. This study indicates that alternative models are more effective in reducing youth offending in practical and economic terms.
The movement to end youth incarceration
The movement to reduce and end youth incarceration is a widespread collection of thousands of activists, lawyers, community organizersCommunity organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...
, educators, artists, and youth working on specific legislative and localized initiatives.
Movement goals include shutting down particularly bad prisons and detention centers, demanding better treatment for youth in the system, providing and demanding better representation for young people in court, affecting legislation to curb youth incarceration, working to abolish arrest warrants for young people, and promoting alternatives to incarceration.
There are national organizations and local ones, opposition from inside the criminal justice system and from outside of it. The movement is diverse in many ways, and is difficult to encapsulate in a single entry. Listed below are some examples of movement struggles:
The Maryland campaign to Close Cheltenham
The Cheltenham Juvenile Detention Center in MarylandMaryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
was one of the nation's most infamous prisons for boys. Started in 1872 as the House of Reformation for Colored Boys, Cheltenham was home to a wildly overrepresented population of minority youth
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
. But the racial injustice
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
inside the notorious prison was not what ultimately led to its demise.
The conditions at Cheltenham were deplorable. Overcrowded and understaffed, Cheltenham was also flagged by fire safety
Fire safety
Fire safety refers to precautions that are taken to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a fire that may result in death, injury, or property damage, alert those in a structure to the presence of a fire in the event one occurs, better enable those threatened by a fire to survive, or to reduce the...
inspectors as one of the least safe buildings in the state. The antiquated prison structure—each cell had to be individually unlocked, and at times prison staff could not present keys to some cells—was also the site of an enormous amount of brutality and violence.
Local citizens in the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition developed the Maryland Campaign to Close Cheltenham in 2001. The campaign involved parents of incarcerated youth, youth activists, and faith leaders from across the state. Through a targeted media campaign to shift public opinion, the Campaign succeed in passing legislation
Legislation
Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...
through the annual budget to phase out and close Cheltenham, and to increase state spending on community-based alternative programs for youth offenders.
Taking on Tallulah in Louisiana
The Tallulah Correction Center for Youth in LouisianaLouisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
had been open for only three years when it was first sued by the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
(in collaboration with local activists in the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana) for violating the civil rights of youth held in its confines—marking the first time in U.S. history that the federal government has actively sued a state over the conditions of its juvenile detention facilities.
That same year the filthy conditions, brutal violence and chronic understaffing earned the center a citation as "the worst in the nation." In 1999, even after the federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
had taken over partial responsibility for improving conditions, things were so unsafe for the youth that the staff of the center walked out, leaving 400 boys completely unsupervised.
Youth and adult activists appealed to the state legislature
Louisiana State Legislature
The Louisiana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 representatives, and the upper house, the Louisiana Senate with 39 senators...
to shut down the prison once and for all. But their aspirations didn't stop with the abolition
Prison abolition movement
The prison abolition movement seeks to abolish prisons and the prison system. The movement advocates for the abolition of prisons and the prison system on the basis of it being ineffective. Prison abolitionists present a broad critique of the modern criminal justice system, which they believe to...
of one prison—they sought to redefine the juvenile justice system in the state, to change it from one based almost entirely on incarceration and punishment to a new system focusing on community-based alternatives to incarceration.
In 2003 the state of Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
became nationally recognized for its leadership in reforming a broken juvenile justice system. With the passage of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003 (Act 1225), then Governor Kathleen Blanco
Kathleen Blanco
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was the 54th Governor of Louisiana, having served from January 2004 until January 2008. She was the first woman to be elected to the office of governor of Louisiana....
and the Louisiana State Legislature
Louisiana State Legislature
The Louisiana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 representatives, and the upper house, the Louisiana Senate with 39 senators...
ushered in a period of reform in which the notoriously brutal Tallulah prison for youth was shut down, conditions were improved in other abusive youth prisons throughout the state, and a commitment was made to both the increased use of alternatives to incarceration for youth and to revamping secure care prisons to be small, therapeutic
Therapy
This is a list of types of therapy .* Adventure therapy* Animal-assisted therapy* Aquatic therapy* Aromatherapy* Art and dementia* Art therapy* Authentic Movement* Behavioral therapy* Bibliotherapy* Buteyko Method* Chemotherapy...
facilities that were regionalized to keep children closer to their families.
Before the passage of Act 1225, over two thousand children were held in prison in Louisiana. Today the system holds just over 500 children state-wide. In 1998 the rate of recidivism
Recidivism
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...
, or children returning to prison after release, was 56% as compared to 11% today. This decrease in the number of children incarcerated has contributed to an increase in public safety
Public Safety
Public safety involves the prevention of and protection from events that could endanger the safety of the general public from significant danger, injury/harm, or damage, such as crimes or disasters .-See also:* By nation...
.
Proposition 21 in California
In 2001 CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
residents passed Proposition 21
California Proposition 21 (2000)
California Proposition 21, known also as Prop 21, was a proposition proposed and passed in 2000 that increased a variety of criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth and incorporated many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice system...
, a multi-faceted proposition designed to be tough on youth crime, incorporating many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...
.
Opponents to this law included activists from Californians for Justice, Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance is a national, member-based grassroots organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the prison-industrial complex...
, the Youth Force Coalition, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a non-profit strategy and action center based in Oakland, CA. The stated aim of the center is to work for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America....
, and the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
. Advocates in the ACLU challenged many portions of the law, including a provision automatically sentencing youth 14–17 years old in adult court. This portion of the law was struck down by the California Courts of Appeal in 2001.
Opposing zero-tolerance policies
The term "zero toleranceZero tolerance
Zero tolerance imposes automatic punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct. Zero-tolerance policies forbid persons in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are...
" is not defined in law or regulation; nor is there a single widely accepted practice definition. The United States Department of Education
United States Department of Education
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government...
, National Center for Education Statistics, defined zero tolerance as "a policy that mandates predetermined consequence
Consequence
Consequence may refer to:* In logic, consequence relation, also known as logical consequence, or entailment* In operant conditioning, a result of some behavior...
s or punishment
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
s for specified offenses". The purpose of zero-tolerance policies, according to their proponents, is to send a message that certain kinds of behaviors are not tolerable on school grounds. About 94% of public schools in the United States have zero-tolerance policies for guns; 91% for other weapons; 88% for drugs; 87% for alcohol and 79% for tobacco.
Opposition to zero-tolerance policies, especially at the local level, focus on critiques including charges that the program is discriminatory
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
, unconstitutional
Constitutionality
Constitutionality is the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution. Acts that are not in accordance with the rules laid down in the constitution are deemed to be ultra vires.-See also:*ultra vires*Company law*Constitutional law...
, harmful to schools and students, ineptly implemented, and provides harsh punishment (suspension
Suspension (punishment)
Suspension is a form of punishment that people receive for violating rules and regulations.- Workplace :Suspension is a common practice in the workplace for being in violation of an organization's policy...
of education) for minor offenses (possession of tobacco).
A few infamous cases have been used by opposition groups, such as Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, to further their case against the policy. The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice released a story in 2003 about a 13 year old girl in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west central Alabama . Located on the Black Warrior River, it is the fifth-largest city in Alabama, with a population of 90,468 in 2010...
arrested and detained for 5 weeks for possession of what was thought to be marijuana, but turned out to be oregano
Oregano
Oregano – scientifically named Origanum vulgare by Carolus Linnaeus – is a common species of Origanum, a genus of the mint family . It is native to warm-temperate western and southwestern Eurasia and the Mediterranean region.Oregano is a perennial herb, growing from 20–80 cm tall,...
. The zero-tolerance practice in Illinois of sending any youth charged with drug crimes within 1,000 feet of any school or public housing project directly to adult court has resulted in the largest racial disparity in the country—over 99% of youth affected by this policy were minority
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
youth.
Opposition to zero-tolerance policies nationwide and locally is broad and growing. Organizational leadership has been provided nationally by Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
and the American Bar Association
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...
, who has officially opposed such policies since 2001.
Promoting alternatives: the JDAI
Most activists in the movementSocial movement
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....
to end youth incarceration believe that the best way to mitigate the impact of detention and incarceration on our youth is to reduce the number of youth that pass through the system. By providing credible alternatives to incarceration, this portion of the movement provides opportunities for communities to treat, rather than punish, young offenders—much the way that the juvenile justice system was founded to do.
The largest actor in this segment of the movement is the JDAI- The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. The JDAI is a private-public partnership being implemented nationwide, with pilot programs in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. Their goal is to make sure that locked detention is used only when absolutely necessary.
Their approach is multi-faceted, including multiple emphases on: Inter-governmental collaboration; reliance on data; creation and implementation of objective admissions screening for detention facilities; expedited case processing to reduce pretrial detention; improved handling of “special cases”; express strategies to reduce racial disparities; improving the conditions of confinement; and researching, testing, and endorsing alternatives to confinement.
Alternatives to confinement are sensitive to family and culture, and treatment is often built around the strengths of the youth and their families. Alternative treatment methods might include any combination of the following, as well as other approaches: diversion
Diversion
Diversion may refer to:*diversion, a detour, especially of an airplane flight due to severe weather or mechanical failure, or of an ambulance from a fully occupied emergency room to one another nearby hospital*diversion, a distraction...
, mentorship
Mentorship
Mentorship refers to a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person....
, Aggression Replacement Training
Aggression Replacement Training
Aggression Replacement Training is cognitive behavioral intervention focused on adolescents, training them to cope with their aggressive and violent behaviors. It is a multimodal program that has three components; Social skills, Anger Control Training and Moral Reasoning...
, Functional Family Therapy, and multisystemic therapy
Multisystemic therapy
Multisystemic Therapy is an intensive, family-focused and community-based treatment program for chronic and violent youth...
.
The JDAI has produced some promising results from their programs. Detention center populations fell by between 14% and 88% in JDAI counties over the course of 7 years 1996-2003). These same counties saw declines in juvenile arrests (an indicator of overall juvenile crime rates) during the same time period ranging from 37-54%.
See also
- Incarceration in the United States
- American juvenile justice systemAmerican juvenile justice system-History:Lolit'smineThe first juvenile court was established in 1899 in Chicago as a byproduct of the Progressive Era. Before this, anyone under the age of seventeen who committed a crime was placed in the same system as adults. However, by this time, social views had begun to change...
- Kids for cash scandalKids for cash scandalThe "Kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from the co-owner and builder of two private,...