ARTICLES

August 14, 2008

Editorial

The Case for Juvenile Courts

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.

The juvenile justice system was one of the great reforms of the Progressive Era. The push to go back to trying children as adults began in the mid-1990s, when state lawmakers fixated on a few, high-profile crimes by young people and � convinced there was a youth crime wave � came up with a politically convenient solution.

Young people who commit serious, violent crimes deserve severe punishment. But reflexively transferring juvenile offenders � many of whom are accused of nonviolent crimes � into the adult system is not making anyone safer. When they are locked up with adults, young people learn criminal behaviors. They are also deprived of the counseling and family support that they would likely get in the juvenile system, which is more focused on rehabilitation. And once they are released, their felony convictions make it hard for them to find a job and rebuild their lives.

Nearly every state now has laws that encourage prosecutors to try minors as adults. The recent studies of this approach should lead legislatures to abandon these counterproductive policies.

Help Closer to Home

July 11, 2008

NY Times Editorial

One proven way to prevent borderline young offenders from becoming serious criminals is to treat them � and their families � in community-based counseling programs instead of shipping them off to juvenile facilities that are often hundreds of miles away from home. Early data suggests that New York City�s alternative-placement programs are cutting recidivism rates.

In addition to saving young lives, the community-based programs cost a lot less: $20,000 per child per year versus as much as $200,000 for holding a child in a juvenile facility. Despite that, politicians and labor unions � eager to preserve local jobs � are fighting hard to keep facilities open.

Earlier this year, Gladys Carri�n, the commissioner of New York�s Office of Children and Family Services, announced her intention to close five of the state�s 22 facilities for low-level offenders and an intake center in the Bronx. A longtime advocate of community-based therapies, Ms. Carri�n was fiercely criticized by the unions and communities where the facilities are located. The Legislature then restored funding for one of the facilities and the intake center. Gov. David Paterson will need to press a lot harder to close the rest of the unneeded centers and to help keep the reform effort on track.

If there is any doubt, Governor Paterson and other politicians in Albany should review the data on recidivism. About 80 percent of the young men who are placed in juvenile facilities in New York end up committing more crimes within three years of their release. Preliminary data from New York City suggests that the recidivism rate for the new community-based programs might be as low as 35 percent.

The idea is to help borderline young offenders before they turn to serious crime. Young people are required to participate in the programs as a condition of probation. Both they and their families are provided with counselors who teach parenting skills and who often mediate between troubled children and their families.

New York and other states will always need some facilities for young people who commit grave crimes. But they need to stop reflexively confining young people who present little or no risk. New York needs to greatly expand access to community-based programs. It can do that by closing unneeded juvenile detention centers and investing the savings in programs like the ones adopted in New York City.

Let's be clear: Teens who commit offenses deserve to be punished. Toledo has had its share. But sending such young ones to prison for life is barbaric. Animal rights activists work to recoup the life of abused, neglected, and abandoned animals. Why not the same for teen offenders?

In steps the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Ala., and New York City. The nonprofit agency objects to the policy of sending teens 13 and 14 to die in prison. No other country does that.

Bryan Stevenson, distinguished in his own right, is the founder and executive director of the agency, which provides legal counsel for poor defendants and prisoners denied fair and just legal treatment. He is a Harvard Law School graduate who could easily command a salary at any major law firm. But the nationally known professor and lecturer prefers to wage these battles, and passionately works to get the youths resentenced with a chance for parole.

About 2,300 juveniles currently serve sentences for life in prison without parole. EJI has taken up the cause in 73 of the most egregious cases where the offenders got life sentences when they were 13 or 14.

Although the total number of inmates in California decreased by more than 4,700 from March 2007 to August 2008, the number of inmates enrolled in academic programs there grew from 11,925 to 14,050, according to Jan Blaylock, superintendent of the state's Office of Correctional Education.

Figures released last week show that three times as many inmates in California's Juvenile Justice system enrolled in college courses over the past three years, and there was a 50% increase in the number of inmates passing the general equivalency diploma (GED) test, Kane said.

�In Arkansas, the statewide prison school system had the largest graduating class in the state this year: 872 inmates earned high school equivalency diplomas, according to William Byers, superintendent of the Arkansas Correctional School.

�In Tennessee, inmates at the State Prison for Women earn college credit alongside students from Lipscomb University, said Lipscomb professor Richard Goode, who began the program in January 2007.

�In Pennsylvania, inmates have Individual Plans of Instruction developed to meet their educational needs and are required to take a victims awareness class to teach them the consequences of their crimes on victims, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said.

The educational emphasis represents a shift away from warehousing prisoners and toward preparing them for life after prison, said Eric Schultz, director of government affairs for the American Correctional Association.

"You have to start preparing offenders for re-entry from Day One," he said.

"It's a motivation factor, it's a morale factor, it's a behavior factor," said Linda Caldwell, associate warden for programs at the Tyger River Correctional Institution School near Enoree, S.C. "Everything that these folks do in education helps my institution run so much better."

Out of a class of 217 students in GED classes at Tyger River in the 2007-08 school year, 186 earned the GEDs � an 86% completion rate. "At least we're giving them a fighting chance when they get out," Principal Kevin Morrow said.

Tim Terry says the Palmetto GED program played a big part in his life when he got out of prison after serving more than 15 years on a voluntary manslaughter charge.

After earning his diploma and participating in Kairos, a Christian prison ministry, he said he was motivated to help other inmates when he got out in 2002.

Since then, he has organized four different programs across South Carolina that have helped at least 600 recently released inmates get a new start, he said.

"I've actually enrolled in college since I've been out, working toward my degree in counseling," he said.

Aiming to 'humanize'

Some argue that spending money to educate prisoners is neither effective nor appropriate. Ted Deeds, chief operating officer of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America � a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of law enforcement professionals, crime victims and concerned citizens � said he's "extremely leery" that educating prisoners does much to rehabilitate most criminals.

"We should not be spending more money for touchy-feely programs when we don't have enough money right now for actual brick and mortar prisons and bed space," he said.

The Arkansas Department of Corrections did a study that showed that GED programs in jails there have cut the recidivism rate there by 8 percentage points, according to Byers.

Education helps "humanize" inmates who have become disconnected from society, Lipscomb's Goode said.

Barnett reports for The GreenvilleNews in South Carolina