Justice for Kids

Keeping Kids Out of the Juvenile Justice System

Nancy E. Dowd

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780814744086
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Droit pénal

Children and youth become involved with the juvenile justice system at a significant rate. While some children move just as quickly out of the system and go on to live productive lives as adults, other children become enmeshed in the system, developing deeper problems and or transferring into the adult criminal justice system. Justice for Kids is a volume of work by leading academics and activists that focuses on ways to intervene at the earliest possible point to rehabilitate and redirect—to keep kids out of the system—rather than to punish and drive kids deeper. Justice for Kids presents a compelling argument for rethinking and restructuring the juvenile justice system as we know it. This unique collection explores the system’s fault lines with respect to all children, and focuses in particular on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation that skew the system. Most importantly, it provides specific program initiatives that offer alternatives to our thinking about prevention and deterrence, with an ultimate focus on keeping kids out of the system altogether.

I
System Change

1
Redefining the Footprint of Juvenile Justice in America

SHAY BILCHIK

Over the past twenty years, we have experienced significant changes in the philosophical underpinnings of the juvenile justice system. Laurie Garduque, of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, argues that this shift represents the beginning of a fourth wave of juvenile justice policy and practice. Prior stages reflect the establishment and growth of a separate court with exclusive jurisdiction over juveniles; waning confidence in that system in the 1950s and 1960s; and the trend to a more punitive approach toward juveniles in the 1980s and early 1990s. This fourth wave is based on the strong and growing body of research concerning the pathways that youth follow into delinquent behavior, including risk and protective factors.

This swing of the pendulum is not new, but in the past we made our case for a more appropriate, proportionate, and consistent response to juvenile offending without the strong research that now exists in support of this position. This opening chapter will address our ability to use this research to create and sustain more effective responses to juvenile crime, and the policy, practice, and leadership implications related to these efforts. It will examine these issues from both a developmental and multisystem perspective, focusing on the use of data, the restructuring of the work that takes place in the juvenile justice system, and the need to collaborate in the development of family and community resources to prevent delinquency, reduce recidivism, and achieve better outcomes for our system-involved youth. The chapter will present a new footprint for juvenile justice systems in the United States.

This chapter will challenge us not only to stretch the boundaries of the juvenile justice system as we currently define it but also to stretch our thinking about where the boundaries lie among child-serving systems. There is a new kind of field building underway—it is no longer just the juvenile justice field, the behavioral health field, the child welfare field, or the youth development field. These fields are doing their work—viewing their work—in a different way: across systems. As some have framed this approach, those who work this way are “boundary spanners” (Steadman 1992).

What we are all striving to provide as we work across those systems is very simple, but very profound and difficult to achieve. Put simply, it is to provide love, opportunity, and hope for our children and youth. This is what we want in our own lives, and it is what we should provide for all of our children: to love and be loved back in a healthy way; to have opportunities, in particular opportunities for skill building and meaningful work; and to have hope for the future—hope that life will get better, that today is not the best life is going to be. It is these three things that are at the heart of what we do each and every day in working with some of the most challenged and challenging young people in our communities.

But we have to go further—we need to make sure that no child falls through the cracks; and too often we do not do that. I would like to amplify this point with a story a colleague once shared with me, one from a different field, but one that makes the point in a very powerful manner.

A visiting lecturer was speaking to a group of businessmen and –women on the subject of risk management. To drive home one of his points, he asked for a volunteer from the audience, and he asked the volunteer the following question: “Imagine that I have a huge steel I-beam here—fifteen feet long, six inches high, and six inches wide. If I put it on the floor in front of this audience, would you be willing to walk across it for fifty dollars?”

“Of course I would,” said the volunteer.

“All right,” said the lecturer, “now let’s imagine that the I-beam has been suspended high above the ground between the two sides of a gorge, with a 300-foot drop down to a bed of rocks. Would you be willing to walk across that same I-beam for fifty dollars?”

“Of course not,” said the volunteer.

Raising his voice dramatically, the lecturer continued. “Now imagine,” he said, “that I am on one side of the gorge and I am holding one of your children over the edge. And you are on the opposite side of the gorge. If you don’t come across the I-beam and get your child, I will drop him. Now will you cross the beam?” The volunteer hesitated for a long moment before making his reply, which was actually a question.

“Which one of my kids have you got?” he asked.

If this story seems humorous, the reason may be that a good number of those reading this book are parents who have had “one of those days” with their kids—or at one point in their lives, were one of those kids! I tell this story, however, to make a very important point. One is unlikely to ever meet an individual who says that he or she does not care about kids. All of us truly want what is best for children on some level. But the way people express this caring, and act on it, varies a great deal.

The man in my story was being asked a very clear question: exactly what steps are you willing to take to help a child? What kind of priority do children have for you when the going gets tough, when there are choices to be made? And his answer revealed what may be an even harder question: which children are you willing to help?

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of parents would do whatever it would take to get across that I-beam—in fact, virtually every adult would do what it would take to save that child. But as a society, perhaps through our benign neglect, we do not act, and kids are slipping through the cracks and to one extent or another, falling into the gorge! And too many of them are children from families without power, living in poverty and in impoverished and disadvantaged communities; and far too many of them are children of color.

I share these thoughts in this opening chapter because the lessons learned in my career are that if we get these basics right, we will have a better chance of succeeding in our work to reduce juvenile delinquency. I saw in my work in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the U. S. Department of Justice (OJJDP), and at the Child Welfare League of America, the pathway kids too often follow—from histories of child abuse and neglect, untreated mental health problems, ungovernability, running away and truancy to minor offending (theft, substance abuse) and then to more serious offending. While I was at OJJDP, we were funding the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency Study (Thornberry et al. 2004), which highlighted for us the average seven-year trajectory that a young person follows from the first signs of acting-out behavior to his or her first arrest for a more serious delinquent offense—seven years of opportunity to intervene, to interrupt that trajectory, seven years of potentially approaching this work with a “no wrong door” perspective, one that allows us to better meet children’s needs.

So how do we take those first steps that many would call prevention or early intervention? First, we must utilize the science of risk and protective factors and apply it to communities, families, and our young people. Second, we need to redefine what we consider our juvenile justice system—in other words, we need to become “boundary spanners” (Steadman 1992).

According to the work of the Causes and Correlates Study Group, and the research of Dr. David Hawkins and Dr. Richard Catalano (see Hawkins et al. 2000), risk factors are defined as predictors of problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, and youth violence. Protective factors are defined as factors that counterbalance the effects of risk, such as opportunities for prosocial activities and the influence of a positive adult to whom the child or youth has bonded. Risk and protective factors are related to the domains in which a child or youth lives his or her life—family, peer group, school, community—and to his or her own individual characteristics. This ecological model allows us to see how we need to approach our work across domains and systems in a data-driven, research-informed manner. It also highlights for us some of the factors that contribute to or accelerate the pathway many young people follow into delinquency. In addition, recent research on adolescent brain development sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation helps us understand the importance of adopting a developmental frame in our work within this ecological model (Grisso and Schwartz 2003; MacArthur Foundation 2010b).

This newfound empirical data cries out for us to acknowledge the multiple factors that lead to delinquency, and to abandon our old ideas about the four corners of the juvenile justice system. We need to redefine the footprint of juvenile justice. Using data-driven/evidence-based approaches, our policy makers and system leaders need to take responsibility for a juvenile justice system that includes seven components or realms of activity, some of which are currently outside of our definition of juvenile justice.

1. Prevention/Early Childhood

2. Prevention/Early Intervention

3. Integrated Court Systems

4. Juvenile Detention Reform

5. Effective System Interventions

6. Juvenile Corrections

7. Aftercare/Parole

It is not enough for these elements to simply exist. Rather, they must be embedded within a system that adheres to principles of an effective juvenile justice system, such as those identified by the MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change juvenile justice reform initiative. These principles include (1) a commitment to fair, unbiased, and nondiscriminatory treatment, (2) a recognition of the differences between adults and juveniles that results in developmentally appropriate treatment, (3) use of the individual differences that each juvenile presents, such as culture, needs, and strengths, to affect decision making, (4) a belief in the potential of youth to change, grow, and become law-abiding, productive members of society, (5) a focus on the safety of the community and of the juvenile through managing risk and addressing needs of offenders, and (6) a culture of responsibility, including youth taking responsibility for their actions, communities taking responsibility for their youth, and systems taking responsibility for their performance (MacArthur Foundation 2010a). It is critical that these principles be kept in mind as I explore each of the seven areas of the new footprint below, and then examine the larger policy framework needed to make this new vision a reality so that better outcomes for our youth can be achieved.

Prevention/Early Childhood

The work of supporting children in a reframed juvenile justice system starts in early childhood, far outside the traditional notion of the parameters of the juvenile justice system. While a juvenile justice director or chief probation officer may not have direct responsibility in this area of practice and policy, he or she must use his or her leadership role to advocate for investment in this area.

One might ask why the development of practice and policy in this area is important for juvenile justice. One example of such work in the prevention/early childhood area is the Nurse-Family Partnership program, a community health program that focuses on first-time, disadvantaged teen mothers, particularly those who are drug involved. It aims to improve outcomes for the expectant mothers and their children by counseling the teens on good health practices, how to care for their child in a responsible and competent way, and how to make plans for their future. These components allow for the healthy development of the child as well as the improved economic well-being of the family (Nurse-Family Partnership 2010b). The results have been extraordinarily positive, reducing child abuse and neglect by 48 percent and reducing the arrests of the babies within the program, when measured fifteen years later, by 59 percent (Nurse-Family Partnership 2010c). The program also reduced the children’s behavioral and intellectual problems by 67 percent when measured at age six (Nurse-Family Partnership 2010c). From an economic standpoint, the net benefit was $34,148 to society per family served, which equals a $5.70 return per dollar invested (Nurse-Family Partnership 2010a).

This level of effectiveness also holds true for early childhood programs that focus on preschool education and family strengthening as both child development and crime fighting tools. The High/Scope Perry Preschool program provided high-quality preschool services for low-income African American children aged three to four years who were at high risk of school failure. Part of the program included home visits by teachers to discuss the child’s development and support the parents in the education of their children. The results for the children participating in the program include the following long-term outcomes:

• 65 percent completed high school compared to 45 percent in the control group;

• 76 percent were employed at age forty, compared to 62 percent in the control group;

• 36 percent were arrested five or more times over their lifetime, compared to 55 percent in the control group;

• an economic return to society of $258,888 (in 2003 dollars) per participant, which equals a $17.07 return on each dollar invested (Schweinhart 2005).

By addressing the risk factors propelling youth into the juvenile justice system early on, early childhood programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership and High/Scope Perry Preschool can stem the trajectory of increasingly serious delinquent behavior before it even begins. This is why it is key for such interventions to be part of the new footprint of juvenile justice.

Prevention/Early Intervention

What we also know now that we did not know twenty to thirty years ago is that bringing young people into the traditional juvenile justice system, in many instances unnecessarily, does more harm than good (Petrosino et al. 2010). A primary example of this is the implementation of zero tolerance policies in schools and their tendency to drive youth into the justice system. To counter this trend, a number of prevention/early intervention programs have been developed. These programs should also be part of the new footprint for juvenile justice.

An example of this type of programming is the School Referral Reduction Program in Georgia. The program, spearheaded by the local court, law-enforcement, and school officials, is designed to reduce the number of referrals to juvenile court for minor offenses (e.g., school fights, disrupting public school, and disorderly conduct) so that school resource officers can focus on the more serious problems in the schools. The program institutes a series of graduated responses. A warning is given for a first offense; a second offense results in a referral to a workshop; and a third offense leads to a complaint being filed. One of the goals of the program is to return the school disciplinarian function to school officials. The results have been very promising. There has been

• a reduction in school referrals to the court from a high of over twelve hundred per year (before program implementation), to approximately four hundred per year currently, and

• a reduction in felonies from a high of two hundred per year to less than one hundred per year currently (Teske 2009).

From both a school safety and ecological perspective, these results are significant. Keeping these young people in school as opposed to pushing them out onto the street has a tremendous impact on the risk and protective factor balance: prosocial connections as a protective factor as compared to school failure and association with negative peers who may also be pushed out of the school and onto the street corner as risk factors. From an economic perspective the benefits are also great. For example, increasing male graduation rates by 5 percent nationally can lead to a benefit of $8 billion each year due to crime savings and additional wages (Alliance for Excellent Education 2006).

Another example of this changing paradigm is the way we view arrest and court referral as opposed to diversion for entry-level offenders. In the 1980s and 1990s we thought it was good enough just to “divert.” We understand better now that it may be even better not to arrest low-level offenders at all.

The Civil Citation program in Miami, Florida, diverts eligible juvenile misdemeanor offenders from the arrest process. Youth are referred to services on the basis of an assessment of their needs. The labeling and individual and family stress associated with arrest is replaced with a strength-based treatment and service orientation. The results have shown that there has been

• a 20 percent reduction in juvenile arrests in the county between 2007 and 2008;

• a 3 percent recidivism rate for youth who have completed the program (Walters 2009);

• a five thousand dollar cost savings per child involved in the program as compare...