Amit Jain, Law Student Committee on Children Connecticut General Assembly Re
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
February 27, 2018 Amit Jain, Law Student Committee on Children Connecticut General Assembly Re: Senate Bill 187 Rep. Urban, Sen. Moore, Sen. Suzio, and members of the committee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Amit Jain, and I am a third-year law student at Yale University. Before studying law, I taught middle school math to children in Boston ages 11 to 15. More recently, as part of my ongoing legal training, I represented youth in the New Haven Superior Court for Juvenile Matters through Yale's Juvenile Justice Clinic, under attorney supervision; taught constitutional law to high school students in New Haven; and interned with the Adolescent Defense Project at the Bronx Defenders, which represents children in adult criminal court. I applaud the Committee's concern for public safety and vulnerable young people. I am testifying today because Senate Bill 187 ("S.B. 187") would be a disastrous and regressive misstep on both fronts. In recent years, the Connecticut General Assembly has taken important steps forward in reforming the juvenile justice system, drawing national attention.1 S.B. 187 would jeopardize this progress by criminalizing and incarcerating youth in crisis, stripping away age-appropriate supports from those who need them most. This bill goes against a principle I internalized after working with youth in both the classroom and the courtroom: our most vulnerable children need support and therapy, not incarceration and criminalization. As is familiar, S.B. 187 would change the law in two ways. First, it would increase juvenile transfers by reducing the age of automatic transfer and adding to the list of charges for which transfer is mandatory. This would be deeply harmful to the youth involved, who need age-appropriate services, programs, and facilities that are unavailable in a criminal court system that is not designed to meet their needs. And it would not advance public safety: it is well-established that incarceration of children re traumatizes them and makes them more likely to re-offend.2 Connecticut's experience bears this out: as the state has reformed its system to detain fewer youth, the incidence of offenses has generally dropped. 3 Children who are accused of the most serious 1 E.g., Richard A. Mendel, Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut: How Collaboration and Commitment Have Improved Public Safety and Outcomes for Youth, Justice Policy Institute (Feb. 27, 2013), http://www.justicepolicy.org/research/4969. 2 See generally, e.g., Barry Holman & Jason Ziedenberg, The Dangers of Detention: The Impact of Incarcerating Youth in Detention and Other Secure Facilities, Justice Policy Institute (Nov. 28, 2006), http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/06-1 l_rep_dangersofdetention_jj .pdf (documenting harms to adolescents' mental health, future earnings, and likelihood of recidivism resulting from detention). 3 E.g., Office of Governor Dannel P. Malloy, Gov. Malloy Says Large Decline in Number of Youthful Offenders -----+-Jemew.rtmt~£-eess in Recen+-Jtweniie---Jtt&tiee-Reforms (8ept;--l-6;--BO-l~eent---dedine~in~--------' incarcerated people aged 18-21, and concurrent 53 percent decline in arrests of individuals in same age group), ,' ___ -- -- offenses do not pose an exception to this rule. If anything, these children are in even greater need of support, not incarceration. Second, S.B. 187 would add to the statutory criteria for detaining children. In addition to being counterproductive for the reasons I have already mentioned, this change would exacerbate alarming racial disparities in youth detention. According to a 2016 study by the Tow Institute, Black and Latinx children in Connecticut's juvenile justice system are over twice as likely to be detained as white children.4 In 2017, the Urban Institute found that the black-white gap for DCF commitment was 24:1-the worst in the country.5 Other disturbing racial gaps persist at nearly every decision point in the state's juvenile system.6 Increasing judges' discretion to detain youth could worsen these gaps and increase the number of children subject to traumatizing confinement.7 The harms would also fall disproportionately on children at risk of trafficking, including girls, homeless youth, and LGBTQ youth. The General Assembly can and should protect Connecticut's vulnerable children and promote public safety. It could advance both goals by investing in under-funded, research-backed treatment and therapy programs, not only for teenagers who are accused of serious offenses, but also for younger children who experience trauma. S.B. 187 would do none of this. Instead, it would criminalize children in crisis, exacerbate child incarceration rates and racial disparities, and threaten public safety. It would be an embarrassing and painful setback for Connecticut's children and communities, after years of path-breaking progress. I urge the Committee to vote down this disastrous proposal and resist the temptation to criminalize children who desperately need support. Sincerely, http ://portal. ct. gov/office-of-the-governor/press-room/press-releases/2016/09-2016/gov-malloy-says-large-decline in-number-of-youthful-offenders. 4 Tow Youth Justice Institute, Connecticut's Juvenile Justice System: Progress and Challenges for 2016 and Beyond 29 (March 2016), https://www.cga.ct.gov/app/tfs%5C20141215_Juvenile%20Justice%20Policy%20and %200versight%20Committee%5C20160519/March%202016%20State%20of"/o20the%20System%20Report.pdf. 5 Hanna Love, Elizabeth Pelletier, and Samantha Harvell, Data Snapshot of Youth Incarceration in Connecticut, Urban Institute Justice Policy Center (June 2017), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/91551/ data_snapshot_of_youth_incarceration_in_connecticut_l.pdf; see also Josh Kovner, Advocates Decry Racial Disparity at Juvenile Jail, HARTFORD COURANT (Jan. 16, 2017), http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc racial-disparity-juvenile-justice-O 116--as-dcf-moves-to-close-the-juvenile-j-20170116-story.html. 6 Tow Institute, supra note 4, at 29. 7 Discretion can allow biases to play more of a role in decision-making. See, e.g., Jillian K. Swencionis & Phillip -:-f!toff;-'l'hrisychological Science of Racial Bias-wrrJ-Policing, 23-f>SYCil.?UB~Pm;:-&-L~ '""7)~;-->J~er~r~y-------+ Kang et al., Implicit Bias in the Courtroom, 59 UCLA L. REV. 1124, 1142 (2012). .