“We have to recognize that incarceration of youth per se is toxic, so we need to reduce incarceration of young people to the very small dangerous few. And we’ve got to recognize that if we lock up a lot of kids, it’s going to increase crime.” – Dr. Barry Krisberg, the longtime president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency now on faculty at the University of California-Berkeley (1)

Our work at Oceanseed Project and leading peer reviewed scientific evidence clearly proves that confinement in youth corrections facilities doesn’t work well. Rates of recidivism are actually consistently high. Ironically, contemporary research shows that incarceration of youth in detention facilities as a strategy of deterring young offenders away from recidivism actually achieves the opposite while additionally straddling these youth with additional life obstacles that are particularly difficult, if not impossible to overcome.

The fact is that incarceration in juvenile facilities significantly reduces a youths’ likelihood for future success either academically or education or professionally. An excellent scientific example of this is an amazing, collaborative, child psychology and psychiatry study completed by researchers from the University of Genoa, Italy and the University of Montreal, Canada. The study, which was based in Montreal, tracked 779 low-income, at-risk boys from the time they entered kindergarten – in 1984 – up through the age of 25 years. By a very significant margin, involvement in the juvenile justice system proved to be the strongest predictor of adult criminality among the array of variables considered. All factors being equal, incarcerated youth 38 times more likely than peer youth with equivalent backgrounds and self-disclosed offending histories to be charged for crimes committed as adults later in life. (2)

In fact finds released in a May 2003 study titled Previously Incarcerated Juveniles In Oregon’s Adult Corrections System by the State of Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, youth 50 percent of previously incarcerated youth offenders had migrated to Oregon’s adult corrections system for new unrelated offenses by the end of the six year of their release from being initially incarcerated as a youth. (3)

It is also worth noting that recidivism in significantly influenced by both the age at which a child is incarcerated and the type of crime they are incarcerated for.  The primary consideration for age is that older childhood offenders, typically 15 and up can be remanded and charged for more serious crimes as adults and sentenced accordingly. Similarly, date for lower risk, less-serious youth offenders shows that incarcerating significantly increases both recidivism and the severity of future violations.

In addition to neither reducing recidivism nor increasing public safety, juvenile detention and incarceration also significantly hinders youths’ odds for success academically and professionally. The vast majority of these children come from environments of significant economic depravity, great propensity of evident drug use and gangs, are far below their expected grade-level – rarely attending school with any regularity, in communities with no strong role models, limited job prospects, suffer from undiagnosed learning disabilities and or mental health needs.  (4)

The evidence clearly shows that youth incarceration actually exacerbates Risk and Protective Factor Framework Hawkins and Catalano Risk and Protective Factor Framework Hawkins and Catalano, creating significant additional barriers to success. Yet Nobel laureate research in economics proves that if these risk factors were systemically and appropriately addressed, beginning at the earliest age possible, these same children would be empowered with a significantly better chance to lead fulfilled, productive, balanced life trajectories. (5)

As studies clearly document, children that are released from juvenile correctional facilities seldom succeed in school.

A 2006 study found that just one-third of youth exiting a Pennsylvania correctional camp pro­gram that said they intended to return to school actually did so. (6) Perhaps not surprisingly, research shows that less than of released youth who enrolled in school upon being released, less that 30% reenrolled or remaining in school after on year. (7)

A recent analysis of young people included in the National Longitudinal Youth Survey found that incarceration at age 16 or earlier led to a 26 percent lower chance of graduating high school by age 19. (8) Another recent research work studying the implications of juvenile arrest on later educational attainment and using Chicago city high school age students found that 64% of adolescents from impoverished neighborhoods that were arrested dropped out of high school. (9) Both of these findings are staggering but are particularly alarming when compared with the national average of 4.1% in 2012, (4.1% Average, 2.7% White, 6.6% Black, 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian / Pacific Islander). (10)

With high school graduation a virtual necessity for successful adulthood, a juvenile arrest, let alone incarceration is in most cases a guaranteed life-trap in for those youth to their existing life-trajectory.

An obvious extrapolation then is the profound, negative impact childhood incarceration takes on future employment. Focusing singularly on work attendance as an indicator—and holding all other variables constant—one study found that individuals incarcerated as juveniles or young adults suffer significantly even years after their release; an equivalent to about three weeks less work per year, four years after release, five weeks for black youth. That is 5-9% respectively. Even at 15 years those who had been incarcerated in their youth worked 10% less than similar individuals who had not been incarcerated. (11)

Juvenile justice systems throughout the United States have become increasingly punitive since the 1970s. Most states have passed legislation making it easier to transfer juveniles to adult criminal courts. Ironically at the same time a growing body of developmental and Nobel laureate socioeconomic science has proven new best practices for maximizing human potential development for a profound social ROI and in the process permanently reducing crime and associated societal costs.

Additionally, leading contemporary science in all fields of study unequivocally proves everything is connected. For viability, economic, health and wellbeing of all living things it is imperative that old methodologies, including our traditional approach to youth detention, incarceration and at-risk youth communities be reassessed. The social, natural and economic cost of inefficient and in many cases unjust solutions can no longer be afforded. Primary objectives along with all other goals need to be equally represented and considered for us to achieve them. To do so unbiased, science based assessments that include both beneficial and negative consequences need to be utilized. By combining contemporary approach of evaluation to contemporary, proven, evidence based, upstream solutions that we can truly achieve our objectives.

Only in this way will we be able to address the biggest problems facing our world today then grow and thrive into the true possibilities of human potential.

The innovative, thought, talent and work coming our of the Santa Cruz Probation Department, one of a select few participants in The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s, Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) program is powerful and ground breaking. There mission of reducing the unnecessary confinement of youth in our country in a manner that facilitates all youth involved in the juvenile justice system having opportunities to develop into healthy, productive adults is in fact nothing short of revolutionary. That said it is just the start and as science shows to make the most profound impact benefiting individuals, families, communities nations and our natural world, our investment needs to begin at birth.

While to many perhaps most, the answer seems as plain as day, the open question that remains is whether our society will not only abandon our shortsighted, longstanding, frequently reactionary and individually motivated models of approach and instead embrace the most effective, constructive, empowering and humane paradigm for how we address these as well as broader needs and in so doing treating others, nature and our world as the single system that it is.

To be continued …

Citations:

1. Cited in Billitteri, Thomas J., “Youth Violence: Are ‘Get Tough’ Policies the Best Approach?,” CQ Researcher, Vol. 20, No. 9, March 5, 2010
2. Gatti, U., R.E. Tremblay, & F. Vitaro, “Iatrogenic Effect of Juvenile Justice,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 50, No. 8, 2009, Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health http://www.jdaihelpdesk.org/miscellaneous/Gatti%20et%20al%202009_1.pdf
3. Previously Incarcerated Juveniles In Oregon’s Adult Corrections System, State of Oregon, Office of Economic Analysis, May 23, 2003
4. http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/oea/docs/oya/oya-to-corrections.pdf
5. James Heckman, Hard Facts About Soft Skills, http://www.heckmanequation.org/content/resource/hard-facts-behind-soft-skills
6. Arthur, Hawkins, et al., 1994, Hawkins, Catalano, Miller, 1992, “Risk and Protective Factor Framework”
7. Keely, James H., “Will Adjudicated Youth Return to School After Residential Placement? The Results of a Predictive Variable Study,” Journal of Correctional Education, Vol. 57, No. 1, 2006, downloaded from http://wrenchproject.com/linked/will%20youth%20return%20to%20school%20after%20placement.pdf
8. Sametz, Lynn & Donna Hamparian, “Reintegrating Incarcerated Youth Into the Public School System,” Juvenile & Family Court Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3, 1987
9. 35. Hjalmarsson, Randi, “Criminal Justice Involvement and High School Completion,” Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 63, No. 2, 2008
10. R.T. Sampson, Harvard University, & D.S Kirk University of Texas, DRAFT: Prepared for Brookings Institution, Project on Social Inequality and Educational Disadvantage Cumulative Disadvantage in the Adolescent Life-Course: The Case of Juvenile Arrest and Later Educational Attainment https://xteam.brookings.edu/eoac/Documents/cumulative_disadvantage_kirk_sampson.pdf
11. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_114.asp
12. Western, Bruce & Katherine Beckett, “How Unregulated is the U.S. Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 4, 1999