What Happens When Youth Are Detained?
School shootings, gang violence, high school students drinking and driving… The news is full of reports on teens accused of committing heinous or at least very dangerous acts. Many want these youth to pay for the harm they cause to victims and their families, as well as to society at large. Juvenile offenders who commit a violent crime may need to be confined to protect public safety. But what happens when we lock kids up before they are officially convicted of a crime they may have committed, or when we lock them up for non-violent offenses? What happens when we incarcerate youth as opposed to placing them in more community-based rehabilitative environments? A recent report commissioned by the Justice Policy Institute examined the impact of placing youth in detention and other secure facilities—and the results are not good.
Detention centers are facilities used to temporarily house youth who are awaiting trial. While the overall juvenile crime rate is decreasing, the number of minors in detention centers has been increasing – about half a million youth every year are detained. A growing number of children are thus separated from their families and communities at a time of great stress and trouble. Although these facilities were originally established for those considered high risk, about 70 percent of detained minors are held for nonviolent offenses.
According to the report, the increasing trend to detain and incarcerate youth has a negative impact. Research conducted in San Francisco concluded that youth who are incarcerated are almost twice as likely to recidivate and almost three times as likely to return to court for a violent crime as youth who are supervised in a community-based setting after their first offense. One possible reason for this finding is “peer deviance training”: placing several children who have engaged in deviant behavior together in close quarters can create an environment of anti-social behavior in which negative influences feed off each other. Instead of the youth “learning their lessons” and changing for the better, they tend to bring out the worst in each other, mutually encouraging a pattern of antisocial behavior. Researchers at the Oregon Social Learning Center reported that delinquent youth who are treated in peer group settings have significantly higher levels of delinquency, violence, and adjustment difficulties as adults than youth who are not grouped together for treatment.
Other research has focused on how detention facilities affect the mental health of the youth housed there. It is estimated that two-thirds of young people in detention centers have a mental disorder. The Justice Policy Institute provides evidence that the “poor mental health” (p.8) of the juveniles and overcrowded, under-served facilities combine to generate higher rates of depression and suicidality in these youth. A study in Pediatrics found that for one-third of incarcerated youth diagnosed with depression, the onset of the depression happened after incarceration. Sometimes youths’ suicidal behaviors result in their placement in isolation, putting them at even greater risk of harming themselves again. Simply put, “Detention makes mentally ill youth worse” (p. 8). This is especially alarming in light of the fact that seven percent of youth who are placed in detention are simply waiting for community mental health services. These youth have committed no offenses, yet are being held until there is room for them in an inpatient mental health facility.
Based on this evidence, the Justice Policy Institute makes several recommendations pertaining to juvenile detention reform. The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) has been created to “address the inappropriate and unnecessary detention of youth” (p. 14). Its strategies include:
Creating objective screening instruments to better determine which youth should and should not be placed in detention;
Expediting case processing so that youth do not stay in detention for unnecessarily long periods of time;
Establishing alternatives to secure confinement that focus on rehabilitation; and
Improving the conditions of confinement.
So far, four jurisdictions are participating in JDAI: Santa Cruz County, California; Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon; Bernalillo County (Albuquerque), New Mexico; and Cook County (Chicago), Illinois. Data from three of these locations (CA, OR, IL) have found decreases in detention populations; two (IL, OR) also had larger declines in their juvenile arrest rates when compared to the rest of the US. JDAI will consider itself a success if more jurisdictions participate and if it continues to see a reduction in the number of youth detained or incarcerated and arrested. This report challenges the current trend to incarcerate youth for crimes they have committed, suggesting that locking them up for their indiscretions does more harm than good.
Questions:
Despite the decrease in youth crime rates, why do we continue to build more secure facilities for youth?
What can we do to ensure that children who are awaiting mental health care are not placed in detention centers until there is space for them at an appropriate facility?
Should the community be responsible for supporting law-breaking youth? How?
What services do you think families with youth who are accused of crimes need the most?
As always, we encourage you to share your views on this topic, and look forward to your responses.
Your thoughts…
Comments:
 As a mental health professional in the juvenile justice system, it has been my experience that youth are detained in secure custody facilities due to the lack of community capacity to provide safe, security settings. One area of concern is that there is no funding for community based programs to provide this needed service. Another is that it is easier to keep in secure custody rather than navigate the mountain of medicaid reimbursement for mental health placement. Our policies and research do not match. Posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 by GP, NC at 07:55 AM
I agree with the above comment -- it is old news, but it is still timely, as nothing has changed. Except for the fact that it is getting worse, not better. We are locking people up and not doing anything to make their lives any different when their sentences are done. And we are even locking people up who do not deserve it because we don't know what to do with them or couldn't care less. Posted Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 10:09 AM
As chair of the Juvenile Justice Board for Circuit 17 it is obvious to any normal thinking individual that these methods simply warehouse and education youth to receive a masters in criminal behavior. The state left out diversion and prevention entirely from their vocabulary for the past eight years.They had a Prevention department in name only with a pittance of a budget. The slashed prevention program grants to a pittable degree and increased the budget for boot camps and prisons that demonstrate rather quickly that remaining in these institutions could mean death. Workers are paid a salary that actually punishes them for the positions they are hired for. It is safer and more profitable to clean garbage off the streets than to work with our youth. You can earn more money as an adult corrections officer that a juvenile probation officer who might make a difference in the lives of thse youth if they didn't give them case loads that are so high that no dedicated JPO has a chance worth a dam to work with children in a way to actually make a difference. This situation is njot new. It is old, old, old news. Where are the legislators that give more than 5 seconds of their time. Where is the administration that says this is enough. We stop throwing children away today. Posted Monday, January 29, 2007 at 09:05 AM
I think it's pretty well clear by now that detention--at least as it fits within the context of current sentencing practices-- doesn't really work that well for youth or for adults. There is an obvious need for better diversion, more alternatives, and programs that offer juvenile offenders the kinds of skills and opportunities that provide them incentives to participate in legitimate activities. Posted Friday, January 26, 2007 at 11:56 AM
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