/ Uncategorized / By

Youth Justice Awareness Month: A Time to Treat Kids as Kids

October 29, 2012 | Karin Drucker

As Youth Justice Awareness Month comes to an end, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) urges public leaders, schools, law enforcement, and community members to do better than awareness. We already are well aware of what works—and what is ineffective and even harmful—in juvenile justice. Now is the time to turn that knowledge into action, reforming the juvenile justice system.

As Youth Justice Awareness Month comes to an end, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) urges public leaders, schools, law enforcement, and community members to do better than awareness. We already are well aware of what works—and what is ineffective and even harmful—in juvenile justice. Now is the time to turn that knowledge into action, reforming the juvenile justice system.

Here are some realities: On any given day, an estimated 6,000 juveniles are incarcerated in an adult facility, which will make them 36 times more likely to commit suicide and five times more likely to be sexually assaulted than peers in juvenile detention. More than 200,000 juveniles are tried as adults every year. To comply with laws that require “sight and sound separation” of juveniles from adults, jails resort to holding youth in isolation; even a few days of isolation can lead to severe paranoia, depression, and anxiety. Some jails isolate youth for as long as six months. And studies to date suggest African American youth are transferred to the adult system at rates higher than any other ethnicity.

The list of grim statistics marches on.

How do we start to improve this system? One way is to follow the Supreme Court, which has recognized that while some states prosecute children under age 10 as adults, science tells us their brains will not be fully developed until after they can vote and legally drink. Brain research over the past few decades has shown definitively that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for cognitive processing and impulse control, takes more than 20 years to develop.

Furthermore, the vast majority of young people in the justice system have experienced serious trauma and chronic stress; they also suffer from mental illness. As a result, their prefrontal cortexes do not develop normally. They literally are wired differently.

What can we do? Urge states to change their practices and reject the myth that “adult crime” warrants “adult time.” More specifically:

  • Ensure that all youth under age 18 stay in the juvenile justice system.
  • Guarantee adequate counsel from adjudication to release from detention and reject mandatory minimums.
  • Put an end to re-traumatizing practices, including isolation and unnecessary force.
  • Enforce the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards to protect all incarcerated men and women from assault.
  • Provide appropriate education and mental health services to youth currently in adult facilities.
  • Push courts to abide by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s conclusion in Miller v. Alabama, that in addition to age, “the background and mental and emotional development of a youth defendant be duly considered in assessing [a youth’s] culpability.”

As Justice Kagan put it, “… Penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children.” Young people should have their entire lives ahead of them.