Questioning California’s Maximum Security Adolescents

As more and more bills come due—and not in a good way—from California’s nearly three decades of lock ’em up, prison-ballooning fever, a new Department of Justice report about the unintended cost of trying juveniles as adults, arrives at a propitious moment.

First a little history:

For the first three-quarters of the 20th century, in all but the most dire cases, kids under the age of 18 were tried and sentenced within a juvenile system. The primary governing concept of this strategy was based on the idea that children and adolescents were developmentally different than adults, that they were still forming psychologically and, as such, were less mindful of the consequences of their actions, and more malleable to transformation and reform.

It’s why juveniles can’t vote, enter into binding legal contracts, join the military, purchase tobacco or alcohol, nor can adults can’t have legal sex with them.

Then in the 1980’s when the rise in gang violence led to myth of a coming wave of super predator teenagers (which never arrived), states began passing a series of get tough laws that made it possible to try more and more kids as adults. The belief was that we could “scare” kids “straight.” All at once, the focus was no longer on the offender, but almost solely on the offense. California, as usual, led the way with the toughest laws of all, such as the STEP Act and Proposition 21.

Only one problem. It didn’t work. Every major study done in the last ten years has showed that the threat of adult incarceration has had no appreciable deterrent effect. And for those kids who are actually incarcerated, the strategy had precisely the opposite of its intended effect. In study after study, researchers found that juveniles who were transferred to adult prisons reoffended far more frequently than youth charged with the same crimes who were retained in the more rehabilitative juvenile system.

In addition, the transferred kids committed more serious crimes when they got out, than the equivalent non-transferred kids. (Researchers were also unsettled to note that kids in adult prisons were eight times more likely to commit suicide and five times more likely to be sexually assaulted than youths in juvenile facilities.)

Yet, this information has not even slightly dampened the incarceration infatuation that still governs California’s legal system, particularly when it comes to lawbreaking kids. In fact, a proposed statewide initiative, called the Runner Initiative will be on the ballot in November. If passed, it will—among other things—push for still more juveniles to be tried as adults. (I’ll blog more on Runner when the election is closer.)

Thus, it was encouraging when this month the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention issued a brand new report that said what many of us have known for a long time—mainly that this broad brush Get Tough On Juveniles policy does more harm than good.

The report’s release triggered an editorial in yesterday’s NY Times. (At least it was in Wednesday’s paper although it appears to have gone online the night before.)

Here are a couple of relevant ‘graphs:

This country made a terrible mistake when it began routinely trying youthful offenders as adults. This get-tough approach was supposed to deter crime. But a growing number of government-financed studies have shown that minors prosecuted as adults commit more crimes — and are more likely to become career criminals — than ones processed through juvenile courts.

The value of specialized courts for young people is underscored in a new report from the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. After evaluating the available research, it concludes that transferring juveniles for trial and sentencing to an adult criminal court has increased recidivism, especially among violent offenders, and has led many young people to a permanent life of crime….

Right you are. Welcome to California!

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PS: And, while we’re on the general subject, this morning’s LA Times has an appropriately sharp-tongued editorial about the little matter of the $8 billion prison health care problem (see post below): “Who’s to blame for the sorry state of California’s prisons — and the $8-billion bill?” asks the Times editorial board. Answer: “We all are.”

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Photo by Jean Hart Howard, New York Times Magazine