Juvenile Justice
This AP article has been nagging at me ever since I read it yesterday. It has to do with how we have been treating kids who have been convicted of crimes varying in seriousness from murder to shoplifting.
A generation after America decided to get tough on kids who commit crimes - sometimes locking them up for life - the tide may be turning.
States are rethinking and, in some cases, retooling juvenile sentencing laws. They're responding to new research on the adolescent brain, and studies that indicate teens sent to adult court end up worse off than those who are not: They get in trouble more often, they do it faster and the offenses are more serious.
I remember when the shift to charging kids as adults began. The news was filled with 15 year old gangsters killing people in drive-bys and with episodes of an odd phenomenon known as "wilding." Juvenile Hall just didn't seem like enough punishment for these crimes. A Los Angeles Deputy D.A. friend referred to a juvenile court decision as "60 days at Disneyland." Folks were appalled at the ferocity of the crimes and believed that the relatively short sentences were a travesty. The feeling was that these were adult crimes and should be sentenced as such, which means some 15 year olds were sentenced to some pretty harsh hard-time at the adult prisons. And when they emerged, they came out with all of the wrong kind of education.
Fortunately, with the drop in violent crimes, people are calming down a little and beginning to rethink the juvenile justice system once again. Do we just want to warehouse these kids with adults who will first abuse them and then teach them all sorts of nasty tricks? Or, do we want to rehabilitate them so then can come out and start over again.
Although some prosecutors mentioned in the article point to some of the more heinous crimes committed by kids to justify the adult sentencing, statistics indicate that those cases are fairly rare:
Though juvenile crime tends to evoke images of gangs and murder, violent teens are the exception.
Studies show they account for about 5 percent of all juvenile arrests. Drugs, burglary, theft and other property crimes are among the more common reasons teens are prosecuted in adult courts.
Knowing that, I think it makes more sense to try to salvage these kids with counseling, education, and job training. It also turns out to be cheaper in the long run, especially when the cost of warehousing these teens in over-crowded prisons. Fortunately, a lot of other people agree:
The MacArthur Foundation said in a report to be released this month that about half the states are involved in juvenile justice reforms - among them, taking more kids out of the adult system, providing more mental health and community based-services and improving conditions at detention centers.
A national poll, commissioned by MacArthur and the Center for Children's Law and Policy and set for release at the same time, also found widespread public support for rehabilitating teens rather than locking them up. Most favored shifting some money states spend on incarcerating kids and using it for counseling, education and job training.
It's about time.
A generation after America decided to get tough on kids who commit crimes - sometimes locking them up for life - the tide may be turning.
States are rethinking and, in some cases, retooling juvenile sentencing laws. They're responding to new research on the adolescent brain, and studies that indicate teens sent to adult court end up worse off than those who are not: They get in trouble more often, they do it faster and the offenses are more serious.
I remember when the shift to charging kids as adults began. The news was filled with 15 year old gangsters killing people in drive-bys and with episodes of an odd phenomenon known as "wilding." Juvenile Hall just didn't seem like enough punishment for these crimes. A Los Angeles Deputy D.A. friend referred to a juvenile court decision as "60 days at Disneyland." Folks were appalled at the ferocity of the crimes and believed that the relatively short sentences were a travesty. The feeling was that these were adult crimes and should be sentenced as such, which means some 15 year olds were sentenced to some pretty harsh hard-time at the adult prisons. And when they emerged, they came out with all of the wrong kind of education.
Fortunately, with the drop in violent crimes, people are calming down a little and beginning to rethink the juvenile justice system once again. Do we just want to warehouse these kids with adults who will first abuse them and then teach them all sorts of nasty tricks? Or, do we want to rehabilitate them so then can come out and start over again.
Although some prosecutors mentioned in the article point to some of the more heinous crimes committed by kids to justify the adult sentencing, statistics indicate that those cases are fairly rare:
Though juvenile crime tends to evoke images of gangs and murder, violent teens are the exception.
Studies show they account for about 5 percent of all juvenile arrests. Drugs, burglary, theft and other property crimes are among the more common reasons teens are prosecuted in adult courts.
Knowing that, I think it makes more sense to try to salvage these kids with counseling, education, and job training. It also turns out to be cheaper in the long run, especially when the cost of warehousing these teens in over-crowded prisons. Fortunately, a lot of other people agree:
The MacArthur Foundation said in a report to be released this month that about half the states are involved in juvenile justice reforms - among them, taking more kids out of the adult system, providing more mental health and community based-services and improving conditions at detention centers.
A national poll, commissioned by MacArthur and the Center for Children's Law and Policy and set for release at the same time, also found widespread public support for rehabilitating teens rather than locking them up. Most favored shifting some money states spend on incarcerating kids and using it for counseling, education and job training.
It's about time.
Labels: Juvenile Justice
posted by Diane at 12:02 PM
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