By David Muhammad, The Imprint
There is great concern among youth justice advocates that juvenile justice practice may be headed toward a return to the “bad old days” of harsh punishments and mass youth incarceration. Instead, we should be following the path with actual evidence of being effective at reducing crime: applying the principles of Positive Youth Justice. This emerging approach, informed by decades of practice and research, generates far better results for both community safety and the youth it engages.
A top priority of this methodology is to minimize young people’s contact with the legal system. Why? Because research has shown that at virtually every juncture of the juvenile justice process, young people who are diverted to less formal or less restrictive options have better outcomes than those with more restrictive conditions. In fact, evidence overwhelmingly shows that contact with the legal system can have the paradoxical effect of increasing the likelihood that a child will commit another crime — making us all less safe. This applies to arrests, generally, compared to diversion to community-based sanctions such as requiring youth to meet with a counselor or to perform community service. When young people are incarcerated the increased risk of recidivism becomes even more pronounced. Confinement, therefore, should be r for the very small number of youth who have committed the most serious and violent offenses.
Another reason for minimizing system contact is that placing a child in a secure facility is extremely expensive — much of the money spent on incarcerating kids could be invested in responses that achieve better results. A 2020 study found, for example, that states pay an average of $588 per day — $214,620 per year — to keep a youth in secure confinement, compared to spending as little as $75 per day to provide community-based services, according to a 2014 study of Florida’s youth justice system. Some California counties reportedly pay more than half a million dollars in a year to keep just one young person in juvenile detention.
It is also worth noting that involvement with police and courts, and especially with secure facilities, can be very harmful to the kids themselves. Research shows, for example, that incarceration, the most extreme form of system contact, not only compromises a young person’s physical, mental and emotional well-being, but it also decreases their chances of continuing their education or securing employment later in life.
A positive youth justice system replaces these expensive, damaging and unsafe practices with an approach that builds upon youths’ personal assets, recognizes young people and their caregivers as partners in the rehabilitative process, and provides needed services through community-based organizations that are easily accessed and better aligned with youths’ demographics and experience.
We have seen this formula work time and again in locations across America. In Maryland, for example, the Thrive Academy operated by the state’s Department of Juvenile Services effectively reduces gun crime among highest-risk youth under care by pairing participants with community-based mentors who help them develop a life plan and provide access to needed services along the way. Similarly, Chicago’s Choose to Change (C2C) program, which provides trauma-informed group therapy and intensive wraparound services to youth who have been impacted by violence, has been shown to sharply reduce violent crime arrests of participants and to increase their school attendance.
When incarceration is necessary, positive youth justice ensures that it is an opportunity for growth rather than an experience of duress. An example is Project Change at San Mateo College. This asset-based program funded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation offers in-person, post-secondary education to incarcerated youth and youth in detention. It also provides wraparound services to previously incarcerated students who go on to attend classes on campus, keeping them on the right path.
Embracing positive youth justice may require a shift in thinking for some. It helps to recognize that the strategy is based on decades of experience showing what works to prevent unwanted behavior and what is effective for rehabilitation. It also is useful to remember that the old strategies, especially incarceration, are known now to be ineffective, harmful and expensive. We all want safety — for ourselves and for others. We also would like to see all our nation’s children flourish. The urgent question of this moment is whether we are serious enough about safety to apply the proven principles that can help us achieve these goals.