Beacon Broadside

By David Chura. This post originally appeared on Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

Most of us know at least a few young teens—15-, 16-,
17-year-olds. A son or daughter. A niece
or nephew. A neighbor or a friend’s
grandchild. We see them around, waiting for the school bus, surfing the
sidewalk on a skate board, hanging out at the mall. Despite what they insist,
teens are only on the cusp of adulthood, and most of us will do whatever we can
to help them make it in the world.

Until, that is, one of those youths gets arrested. Then
all that good will disappears. At least that’s the case in over half the states
which have yet to change their laws prosecuting young teenagers (under the age
of 18) as adults and, if convicted, sending them to adult correctional
facilities. Suddenly that young person becomes
an exile to all the protections and decencies that communities work hard to
provide their children, and she or he enters a world that is blind to the needs
and vulnerabilities of every developing adolescent. (This disenfranchisement is
made starkly clear by the fact that in some states the parents of those teens are
not notified when their children are arrested.)There is nothing nice about a
kid in an adult prison or jail—nothing any of us would wish on the young teens
that we know.

There are lots of numbers to tell us why these laws
are wrong. As the Campaign for Youth Justice states in the conclusion of its report
on state-by-state juvenile justice reform, about 250,000 juvenile offenders are tried in
adult courts annually and nearly 100,000 youths are placed in adult jails and
prisons each year. Yet, as Jessica Sandoval, deputy director of CFYJ, told the
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, 95
percent of minors tried in adult courts nationwide are non-violent
offenders, a fact that much of the public is not aware of.

Even more shocking, CFYJ reports in its “Key Facts:
Youth in the Justice System” that young people housed in adult jails are 36 times more
likely to commit suicide than those housed in juvenile detention
facilities. Likewise inmates under eighteen make up only one percent of the
prison population yet are victims in 21
percent of prison rapes. These grim statistics alone should have all caring
adults voicing support for the efforts of child advocacy groups working to
amend the laws in the remaining states that treat minors as adults in the
criminal justice system.

But even if kids serving time in an adult facility
somehow manage to keep themselves physically and sexually safe, the world of
adult prison will still harm and harden them. While teaching high school students
locked up in an adult correctional facility I saw what prison culture does to
teenagers. The constant threat of violence and intimidation; the noise, foul smells,
and unhealthy food; the chaos and overcrowding; the isolation from family and
positive role models; the lack of mental health services. All these factors
create an environment that can, and does damage the sturdiest of adults. What kind of harm, then, do those conditions
have on a young person still developing physically, emotionally, cognitively,
psychologically, and spiritually?

But shouldn’t these kids be held responsible for
breaking the law? Yes. That is exactly why those who support changing these laws
want to keep younger teens in the juvenile justice system. The adult prison system,
the way it is now structured, is more about retribution than rehabilitation. The
juvenile system, on the other hand, is designed to help children change
behavior and provides them with vital services such as school and substance
abuse treatment which support that change. When we lock up minors in adult prisons the inevitable
focus of incarceration becomes that of survival and of bitter resentment and
retaliation for mistreatment by the criminal justice system. The research supports
that conclusion. Kids handled in the adult system are 34 percent more
likely to reoffend and their behavior to more quickly escalate into
violence than those young people who remain in the juvenile system.

Think of all the teenagers you know or see around
you. What wouldn’t you do to help them, to point them in the right direction,
to shield them from harm? Think of all the benefits we heap on our children,
the advantages we say they all should, must have. Why does all that disappear when
a kid makes a mistake and gets arrested? Why suddenly are they any less
deserving of our personal and national compassion? The least any of us can do
is to support those advocacy groups working for juvenile justice reform and to urge
legislators to support laws that save young offenders from growing up in adult
prisons.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Chura is the author of I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup which received a 2010 PASS Award from the National Council on Crime & Delinquency. He has worked with at-risk teenagers for the past 40 years. For 26 of those years, he taught English and creative writing in community based alternative schools and in a county penitentiary. His writings have appeared in the New York Times as well as other scholarly and literary journals. Visit his website at www.kidsinthesystem.wordpress.com.