No Place for Kids: the Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration
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NO PLACE FOR KIDS The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration The Annie E. Casey Foundation About the Author: Richard A. Mendel is an independent founders of UPS, and his siblings, who named the writer and researcher specializing in poverty-related Foundation in honor of their mother. The primary issues in youth, employment, and community eco- mission of the Foundation is to foster public policies, nomic development. He has written extensively about human-service reforms, and community supports that youth crime prevention and juvenile justice issues, more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulner- including five major publications for the Annie E. able children and families. In pursuit of this goal, the Casey Foundation and three nationally disseminated Foundation makes grants that help states, cities, and reports published by the American Youth Policy neighborhoods fashion more innovative, cost-effective Forum. responses to these needs. For more information and to download copies of this The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable report, visit www.aecf.org/noplaceforkids. organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. It ©2011, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one of the Maryland Table of Contents Introduction 2 What’s Wrong With America’s Juvenile Corrections Facilities? 5 1. Dangerous 5 2. Ineffective 9 3. Unnecessary 13 4. Obsolete 16 5. Wasteful 19 6. Inadequate 22 Is It Really Safe to Reduce Juvenile Confinement? 26 How Should States Go About Reforming Juvenile Corrections? 28 Priority 1: Limit Eligibility for Correctional Placements 28 Priority 2: Invest in Promising Non-Residential Alternatives 30 Priority 3: Change the Financial Incentives 31 Priority 4: Adopt Best Practice Reforms for Managing 32 Youth Offenders Priority 5: Replace Large Institutions With Small, 34 Treatment-Oriented Facilities for the Dangerous Few Priority 6: Use Data to Hold Systems Accountable 36 Conclusion: Embracing Better Policies, Programs, and 38 Practices in Juvenile Corrections Endnotes 40 Additional resources and state-level data for many of the report’s research find- ings are available at www.aecf.org/noplaceforkids. 1 Introduction For more than a century, the predominant strat- three-fifths of the total youth population, were egy for the treatment and punishment of serious just 37 percent of the confined youth. and sometimes not-so-serious juvenile offenders America’s heavy reliance on juvenile incarceration in the United States has been placement into is unique among the world’s developed nations. large juvenile corrections institutions, alterna- (See Fig. 1 on p. 3.) Though juvenile violent tively known as training schools, reformatories, crime arrest rates are only marginally higher in or youth corrections centers. the United States than in many other nations, Excluding the roughly 25,000 youth held in a recently published international comparison detention centers daily awaiting their court trials found that America’s youth custody rate (includ- or pending placement to a correctional program, ing youth in both detention and correctional the latest official national count of youth in cor- custody) was 336 of every 100,000 youth in 2002 rectional custody, conducted in 2007, found that —nearly five times the rate of the next highest roughly 60,500 U.S. youth were confined in cor- nation (69 per 100,000 in South Africa).2 A rectional facilities or other residential programs number of nations essentially don’t incarcerate each night on the order of a juvenile delinquency minors at all. In other words, mass incarceration of troubled and troublemaking adolescents is nei- ther inevitable nor necessary in a modern society. State juvenile corrections systems in the United States confine youth in many types of facilities, including group homes, residential treatment centers, boot camps, wilderness programs, or county-run youth facilities (some of them locked, others secured only through staff super vision). But the largest share of committed youth— about 40 percent of the total—are held in locked long-term youth correctional facilities operated primarily by state governments or by private firms under contract to states.3 These facilities court.1 For perspective, that’s more adolescents are usually large, with many holding 200–300 than currently reside in mid-sized American youth. They typically operate in a regimented cities like Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, (prison-like) fashion, and feature correctional Tennessee; Baltimore, Maryland; or Portland, hardware such as razor-wire, isolation cells, and Oregon. A high proportion of these confined locked cell blocks. youth are minority. According to the most recent national count, two of every five confined youth Yet these institutions have never been found to are African Americans and one-fifth are His- reduce the criminality of troubled young people. panic; non-Hispanic white youth, who comprise Quite the opposite: For decades now, follow-up 2 FIGURE 1 YOUTH INCARCERATION RATE: UNITED STATES VS. OTHER NATIONS 350 336.0 300 JUVENILE INCARCERATION RATE TE 250 PER 100,000 YOUTH POPULATION 200 TION RA 150 INCARCERA 100 68.0 69.0 51.3 50 46.8 33.0 24.9 23.1 18.6 11.3 3.6 0.1 4.1 0 AUSTRALIA ENGLAND FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY ITALY JAPAN NETHERLANDS NEW SCOTLAND SOUTH SWEDEN USA & WALES ZEALAND AFRICA Source: Hazel, Neal, Cross-National Comparison of Youth Justice, London: Youth Justice Board, 2008. studies tracking youth released from juvenile However, an avalanche of research has emerged corrections facilities have routinely reported over the past three decades about what works and high rates of recidivism. Meanwhile, reports of doesn’t work in combating juvenile crime. This pervasive violence and abuse have been regularly report provides a detailed review of this research, emerging from these facilities for as long as any- and it comes to the following conclusion: We one can remember. now have overwhelming evidence showing that wholesale incarceration of juvenile offenders is a Nonetheless, incarceration in secure congregate- counterproductive public policy. While a small care youth corrections facilities has persisted number of youthful offenders pose a serious as the signature characteristic and the biggest threat to the public and must be confined, incar- budget line item of most state juvenile justice cerating a broader swath of the juvenile offender systems across the nation. This status quo has population provides no benefit for public safety. been buttressed in part by public fears of youth It wastes vast sums of taxpayer dollars. And more crime and by politicians’ fears of being labeled often than not, it harms the well-being and “soft” on crime. The aversion to change has been dampens the future prospects of the troubled further reinforced by the closely guarded eco- and lawbreaking youth who get locked up. Other nomic interests of communities that host these approaches usually produce equal or better facilities—and of the workers employed to staff results—sometimes far better—at a fraction of them. Finally, states’ continuing reliance on these the cost. institutions has been abetted by a lack of proven alternatives: if not correctional confinement The idea of shuttering youth corrections facili- for youthful offenders, what? Until the 1980s, ties and substantially shrinking the number of juvenile crime prevention and treatment experts youth in confinement may sound radical. But the had few answers. reality is that in large swaths of the nation—on the east coast, west coast, and in middle America, 3 in big states and small, red states and blue—it’s legal cases concerning conditions of confine- already happening. Often prompted by lawsuits ment in juvenile facilities. “The model has been and revelations of abuse, or by mounting budget around for 150 years, and has proven a failure by pressures, or by studies showing high recidivism, any measure.”6 many states have slashed their juvenile correc- The main body of this report details six pervasive tions populations in recent years—causing no flaws in the states’ long-standing heavy reliance observable increase in juvenile crime rates. The on large, prison-like correctional institutions. trend is continuing, though the pace of change Specifically, the report will show that these facili- remains uneven—in part because the isolated ties are frequently: (1) dangerous, (2) ineffective, changes are occurring largely under the radar, not (3) unnecessary, (4) obsolete, (5) wasteful, and as part of any organized movement. The winds (6) inadequate. A subsequent chapter addresses of change are blowing, but they have not yet the question of public safety, finding that states gathered gale-force intensity. where juvenile confinement was sharply reduced The evidence is clear that these changes must in recent years experienced more favorable continue. The weight of expert opinion solidly trends in juvenile crime than jurisdictions which concurs. maintained or increased their correctional facility populations. “We have to recognize that incarceration of youth per se is toxic,” says Dr. Barry Krisberg, Finally, the report provides recommendations for the longtime president of the National Council states on how to reduce juvenile incarceration on Crime and Delinquency now on faculty at the and redesign their juvenile corrections systems. University of California-Berkeley, “so we need to The time has come for states to embrace a reduce