Juvenile Justice: How Virginia Can Do Better

I was invited to speak at the adult forum at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Middleburg on May 18. They asked for a topic. I suggested “Juvenile Justice: How Virginia Can Do Better,” thinking that was a good way to invite people to consider the changes that will best help young people and communities.

The topic led me to prepare an outline of some of the changes we need to make. Here they are, for your comments and questions:

• Move from the obsolete, ineffective system of youth prisons to small, local programs for “deep end” youth. This is a top priority. Incarceration does not help young people, especially incarceration in a distant community, where it’s difficult to make the transition home. The youth prison or “training school” model is a failure at creating successful, productive youth. Missouri and Massachusetts have successfully replaced their youth prisons with smaller, local alternatives.

• Create and sustain a range of alternatives to detention and commitment. Detention pulls youth deeper into the juvenile and criminal justice system and increases their chance of re-offending. (See The Dangers of Detention from the Justice Policy Institute.) Alternatives to detention work better to curb crime and recidivism, especially when they embrace the principles of Positive Youth Development, giving youth the competencies they need to be productive and successful adults. Virginia has eight Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) sites, and could use more replication of core JDAI principles. The JDAI web site has a lot of excellent publications on detention reform and related issues.

• Ensure that young people have appropriate mental health treatment available without going into the juvenile justice system, and divert youth whose primary behavioral issue is due to mental illness. Of youth who are committed to Virginia’s state system, 65% have a diagnosed mental health need [pdf], not including conduct disorder, oppositional/defiant disorder or substance abuse. Girls in the system have more mental health problems due to trauma and abuse.

The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice has some excellent resources on this issue, including Blueprint for Change: A Comprehensive Model for the Identification and Treatment of Youth with Mental Health Needs in Contact with the Juvenile Justice System and Juvenile Diversion: Programs for Justice-Involved Youth with Mental Health Disorders.

• Ensure that school is not a pipeline to the juvenile justice system. Address the special needs of youth who are having difficulty. Find ways to address truancy without using detention, such as in this article [pdf] from the National Center for School Engagement. Re-examine “zero tolerance” rules and the use of suspension, which causes students to be further disengaged from education. Support alternatives such as Youth Court, which addresses school behaviors in a restorative and community-building way. There are Youth Courts in Roanoke and Huguenot. Here’s a PowerPoint presentation on Roanoke’s Youth Courts.

• Treat youth as youth, with age-appropriate sanctions and treatment. Keep youth out of adult jails and prisons. A number of resources address this issue, including Jailing Juveniles: The Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America [pdf], released by the Campaign for Youth Justice. The Campaign also published The Consequences Aren’t Minor: The Impact of Trying Youth as Adults and Strategies for Reform [pdf], a report that includes specific information on Virginia. In December 2007, the Centers for Disease Control released a study [pdf] that found that youth held in adult prisons are much more likely to be abused and to commit suicide — and are more likely to re-offend — than youth who commit similar crimes but are kept in juvenile facilities. Brain development research confirms that youth should be understood to be different from adults when they commit crimes.

• Make the juvenile justice system fair. Youth of color should get the same treatment as white youth. Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) gets worse the deeper youth go in the system. It is NOT because youth of color commit that much more crime than white youth. It can be addressed through a variety of approaches, such as those found in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) DMC Best Practices Database. You can learn more about DMC in Virginia’s juvenile justice system on this Department of Criminal Justice Services web page.

• Engage families in positive ways throughout the system. As with education and mental health, outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile justice system improve with family involvement. We will explore this more in future posts!

• Invest in prevention and intervention, especially for serious problems such as gangs. New York City took this approach and reduced its gang problem, while Los Angeles uses an extremely punitive approach and its gang problem is growing. (See the Justice Policy Institute publication Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies.)

Rep. Bobby Scott (R-VA) has introduced the Youth PROMISE Act (HR 3846), which enables communities to engage in comprehensive prevention and intervention strategies to decrease juvenile delinquency and criminal street gang activity. The act has 83 co-sponsors as of this post, and is a counterbalance to more punitive legislation that passed the Senate.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) is also up for reauthorization. It contains important provisions to provide better outcomes for youth, families and communities. For more information, visit Act 4 Juvenile Justice web site.

– Liane Rozzell