Alternatives to Confining Youth in Solitary

October is National Youth Justice Awareness Month, and the Campaign for Youth Justice is taking the opportunity to educate the public about youth incarcerated in the adult criminal justice system. Even though the ideas behind laws for sentencing and incarcerating children as adults have been debunked, there are still 250,000 youth on an annual basis in the United States that are tried, sentence or incarcerated as adults. A particularly disturbing aspect of housing youth in adult facilities is that they can be subject to solitary confinement, which has more profound negative impact on youth than on adults.

A new report from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, “Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States,” is based on interviews and correspondence with more than 125 youth in 19 states who spent time in solitary confinement while under age 18.

The bare social and physical environment makes youth feel doomed and abandoned, or in some cases, suicidal, and can lead to serious physical and emotional consequences. Youth in solitary confinement describe cutting themselves with staples or razors, hallucinations, losing control of themselves, or losing touch with reality. They talk about only being allowed to exercise in small metal cages, alone, a few times a week; about being prevented from going to school or participating in any activity that promotes growth or change. Oftentimes they are denied visitation from family and relatives.

Experts assert that youth are psychologically unable to handle solitary confinement with the resilience of an adult. And, because they are still developing, traumatic experiences like solitary confinement may have a profound effect on their chance to rehabilitate and grow. Solitary confinement can exacerbate, or make more likely, short and long-term mental health problems. The most common deprivation that accompanies solitary confinement, denial of physical exercise, is physically harmful to adolescents’ health and well-being.

Youth can be guilty of crimes with significant consequences for victims, their families, and their communities. The state has a duty to ensure accountability for serious crimes, and to protect the public. But states also have special responsibilities not to treat youth in ways that can permanently harm their development and rehabilitation. Fortunately, there is a way to accomplish both public safety and the safety of the youth who have committed crimes.

Solitary confinement is costly, ineffective, and harmful with consequences for both the youth and the general public. Youth who have experienced solitary confinement return to their communities with psychological damage, social deprivation, and the deprivation of essential services such as mental health counseling and education. This puts them at an increased risk to commit more crimes that will reinvolve them with the justice system, and puts them at a disadvantage for acquiring stable employment.

The ACLU’s report describes a number of better policies that policymakers could implement as alternatives to solitary confinement. Youth can be better managed in facilities designed to meet their unique needs, staffed with specially trained personnel, and organized to encourage positive behaviors. Another useful step would be to conduct a review of laws, policies and practices that result in youth being held in solitary confinement to get a better sense of what would be necessary to end this practice.

Of course, the most effective way to reduce youth being held in solitary confinement would be to keep youth entirely out of adult detention facilities. Never housing youth in adult facilities will both help better rehabilitate adolescents and better ensure the safety of our communities. For more details, visit the Policy For Results website on policies that can reduce juvenile detention. Rather than continuing a practice like solitary confinement, which does much harm and no good, policymakers can reform the juvenile justice system so that youth are guaranteed the ability to grow, be rehabilitated, and reenter society successfully.

Sign up on policyforresults.org for updates on results-based public policy strategies for preventing juvenile delinquency and ensuring quality juvenile justice services – coming soon!

Juvenile Life Without Parole and Juvenile Justice Policy

A new report released by The Sentencing Project, The Lives of Juvenile Lifers, is based on their survey of more than 1,500 prisoners who were sentenced to prison terms of life without parole when they were between the ages 13 to 17. The key themes established in the report include:

Socioeconomic Disadvantages, Education Failure, & Abuse

• Two in five respondents had been enrolled in special education classes.
• 77.3% of girls reported histories of sexual abuse; overall, 20.5% of juvenile lifers report being victims of sexual abuse.

Extreme Racial Disparities in JLWOP Sentences

• The proportion of blacks serving life for killing a white person is much higher than the proportion of whites sentenced to life for killing blacks.

JLWOP Sentences Frequently Imposed Mandatorily

• The majority of JLWOP sentences are imposed in states in which judges are obligated to sentence individuals without consideration of any factors relating to a juvenile’s age or life circumstances.

Corrections Policies Curtail Efforts at Rehabilitation

• Most (61.9%) juvenile lifers are not engaged in programming in prison, but this is generally not due to lack of interest, but because of state or prison policies.

The report includes detailed analysis and more statistics regarding these themes and others. In addition to this report, there are a number of useful resources to learn more about the broader issues and impact of juvenile offenders and juvenile justice policy, including:

• The Campaign for Youth Justice: An organization dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing and incarcerating youth under the age of 18 in the adult criminal justice system.
• The Burns Institute: The W. Haywood Burns Institute’s mission is to protect and improve the lives of youth of color, poor youth and the well-being of their communities by reducing the adverse impacts of public and private youth-serving systems to ensure fairness and equity throughout the juvenile justice system.
• Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative: Designed to support the Casey Foundation’s vision that all youth involved in the juvenile justice system have opportunities to develop into healthy, productive adults.
• Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: OJJDP, A component of the U.S. Department of Justice, provides national leadership, coordination, and resources to prevent and respond to juvenile delinquency and victimization. OJJDP supports states and communities in their efforts to develop and implement effective and coordinated prevention and intervention programs and to improve the juvenile justice system so that it protects public safety, holds offenders accountable, and provides treatment and rehabilitative services tailored to the needs of juveniles and their families.
• The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform: The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute is designed to support leaders in the juvenile justice and related systems of care. The Center seeks to complement the good work being done across the country in juvenile justice reform by providing a multi-systems perspective and set of resources in support of this work.

When young people engage in delinquent or criminal behavior and are arrested it is important that they are held accountable for their actions. Policy must ensure that public safety remains a priority while addressing young people’s actions in ways that take into account their diminished decision-making capacity, their susceptibility to peer influence, and their unformed character, all of which make them less responsible for their conduct than are adults who commit similar offenses.

For new and updated results-based policy strategies for both preventing delinquency and ensuring quality juvenile justice services visit our homepage to sign-up for e-mail updates - coming soon!

Community-Based Solutions for Juvenile Offenders

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted that in the past decade the rate of juvenile offenders that are held in detention facilities has dropped by 25 percent, in some states the rate has decreased by more than 50 percent. This is due in part to states addressing the policies that have led to young people being detained.

Research states that many youth are detained because of status offenses, violations of court orders related to status offenses and probation violations. Young people who experience detention have higher rates of attempted suicide and psychiatric disorders; that often go untreated or are inappropriately treated. Youth who are held in detention also have higher recidivism rates and are more likely to engage in adult criminal behavior than youth who are not detained. Reducing the inappropriate or unnecessary use of juvenile detention improves public safety and reduces the likelihood that youth will engage in adult criminal behavior.

For state policy strategies for preventing delinquency and ensuring quality juvenile justice services visit our homepage to sign-up for e-mail updates for new and updated results-based policy regarding Juvenile Justice - coming soon!

New Resources on Juvenile Justice!

Juvenile detention rates have declined since 1990, as have the rates in which young people come into contact with the juvenile justice system in general. However, when young people encounter the justice system and are detained, it can have a long-lasting impact. The National Center for Children in Poverty recently released a new fact sheet for policymakers on juvenile justice. The fact sheet notes that a majority of youth in residential treatment report some form of mental health need or trauma. Furthermore, the fact sheet noted that while most juvenile residential facilities offer at least some therapy or counseling service, the majority of these facilities are ill-prepared to adequately address the needs of the youth in their custody.

• Forty-five percent of youth are incarcerated in facilities that do not screen all new youth in the first 24 hours.
• Among youth with a documented mental health issue that are incarcerated in residential placement facilities, 47 percent have not met with a counselor.

In addition to addressing the important mental health supports needed for youth in the juvenile justice system, the fact sheet also includes guidance for policymakers about community based alternatives, the research supporting treating youth as youth (and not in the adult criminal justice system), as well as ways of improving residential treatment.

For more state policy strategies for both preventing delinquency and ensuring quality juvenile justice services visit our homepage to sign-up for e-mail updates for new and updated results-based policy regarding Juvenile Justice - coming soon!

Youth in the Adult System

In states across the country children are being charged and sentenced as adults. Some are spending time in adult jails and prisons; some (approximately 2,225) are serving sentences for life without the possibility of parole.

According to the Campaign for Youth Justice:

• An estimated 200,000 youth are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States.
• Most of the youth prosecuted in adult court are charged with non-violent offenses.
• Young people who are kept in the juvenile justice system are less likely to re-offend than young people who are transferred into the adult system.
• Currently, 40 states permit or require that youth charged as adults be held before they are tried in an adult jail. In some states, if they are convicted, they may be required to serve their entire sentence in an adult jail.
• On any given day, nearly 7,500 young people are locked up in adult jails.
• On any given day, more than 3,600 young people are locked up in adult prisons.

Earlier this year, the University of Texas at Austin released a report, Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Justice System in Texas. The report provides a comprehensive look at Texas’s methods for dealing with the state’s most serious juvenile offenders. It gathers all available Texas data with respect to juveniles who are transferred to adult criminal court and compares them to the population of juveniles who are retained in the juvenile justice system. The report also compares the significant differences in programming and services for the two populations of juvenile offenders (those who get sent to adult jails and prisons, and those who receive placements in the Texas Youth Commission). The report’s most significant findings about juveniles transferred to the adult system in Texas include:

• Minimal differences exist between juveniles in the adult criminal justice system and juveniles in the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) except for county of conviction.
• Certified juveniles (those in the adult system) do not represent the “worst of the worst”—they are neither more violent nor more persistent in their criminal behavior than those retained in juvenile court and sent to TYC.
• While the large majority of certified juveniles have committed violent offenses, only 17% have committed homicide.
• About 15% of juveniles transferred to adult court are charged with non-violent felonies, including state jail offenses.
• 72% of certified juveniles do not have a prior violent criminal history,
• 29% of certified juveniles are first-time offenders.
• 89% of certified juveniles have never been committed to TYC, indicating that most certified youth have never had the opportunity to benefit from effective rehabilitative programs in the juvenile justice system, such as TYC’s highly regarded Capital and Serious Violent Offenders Program, which has a 95% success rate.

When making policy that is so critical to both to the experiences and outcomes for young people and the public safety, it is critical that policymakers weigh all of the research available to inform their decisions.

There are ways to create public policy that best serves both public safety and that increases the likelihood that youth offenders are rehabilitated and have the opportunity to become productive adults. A report, State Trends: Legislative Changes from 2005-2010 Removing Youth from the Adult Criminal Justice System, from the Campaign for Youth Justice examines innovative “smart on crime” strategies that states are using to remove and protect youth in the adult criminal justice system.

There is also a growing body of knowledge around what works in juvenile justice and what doesn’t. In an article, Juvenile Justice: Lessons For A New Era, the authors, Soler, Shoenberg and Schindler, address: the evaluation of juvenile rehabili­tation and treatment programs, differences between adolescents and adults, prosecution of youth in adult criminal court, the needs of girls, use of incarcera­tion and improvement of conditions of juvenile confinement, and racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. The article includes the authors’ recom­mendations for key changes to juvenile justice policy and practice that should follow from this new body of knowledge.

Visit PolicyforResults for strategies for reducing juvenile detention and visit our homepage to sign-up for e-mail updates on results-based policy regarding strategies for Juvenile Justice - coming soon!