Juvenile Justice
Reduce Arrest/Incarceration
According to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation entitled, No Place for Kids, low-level youthful offenders are being placed into residential programs due to a widespread failure in most jurisdictions to invest in high-quality community-based programming for delinquent youth. One of the most telling traits of juvenile incarceration that distinguishes it most clearly as an obsolete response to adolescent lawbreaking, is cost. Confining juvenile offenders in correctional institutions and other residential settings is far more expensive than standard probation or conventional community supervision and treatment programs.
Despite a 27% decrease in the number of complaints filed against juveniles since 2012, admission to detention centers has not slowed at the same pace. In fact, the number of youth in detention centers has remained steady, according to the Alabama Juvenile Justice Taskforce. Many youth are removed from their homes and placed in detention facilities since there is no statewide funding stream for pre-adjudication detention alternatives that allow youth to remain at home. Around 85% of youth committed to the Department of Youth Services (DYS) had not received the opportunity for diversion from out-of-home placement prior to their first commitment, despite most cases in the juvenile justice system involving lower-level offenses.
According to research collected by the Alabama Juvenile Task Force, “racial disparities exist throughout [Alabama’s] juvenile justice system, including all types of out-of-home placement, and are largest for DYS commitment and transfer to the adult system.” Although they make up just 31% of Alabama’s youth population, Black/African-American youth made up 57% of 1,280 youth taken into DYS custody and 84% of 1,087 youth directly filed as adults. This happens in a state where the law allows any juvenile over the age of 14 years old to be transferred to adult court for any offense.
Growing Kings addresses the challenges of Alabama’s juvenile justice system and the criminalization of Black male youth through “The King in Me”, an alternative-to-detention diversion program designed to reduce the number of low-level juvenile cases filed in Jefferson County’s juvenile justice system, and reduce the overall number of male youth who become involved in the juvenile court system.
Policing Reform
A growing presence of law enforcement officers in schools raises concerns about increasing opportunities to criminalize student behavior, thereby propelling youth into the justice system rather than handling discipline issues within the school. According to the Journal of Criminal Justice, the number of law enforcement officers assigned to patrol schools full time, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs), has swelled since the late 1990s. This increase comes in response to incidents of gun violence that put pressure on schools to revisit security measures. Yet, when evaluating safety concerns in schools, it is critical to examine the role and benefits of the presence of law enforcement compared to, or in addition to, counselors and social support services.
Although prompted by an urgent need to address school violence, employing uniformed officers remains a highly contested practice. When discretion on discipline matters extends beyond the domain of teachers and staff, a 2011 study published in the Justice Quarterly, entitled, “Police Officers in Schools: Effects on School Crime and the Processing of Offending Behaviors,” found that the presence of police officers redefines “disciplinary situations as criminal justice problems rather than social, psychological, or academic problems, and accordingly increases the likelihood that students are arrested at school.” This tendency to rely on the formal processing of youth to ensure safety calls into question SROs ability to accomplish their stated goal (i.e., “to actively provide a safe school environment that is conducive to learning”) without relying on exclusionary discipline tactics that lead to school pushout.
Exclusionary discipline practices employed by uniformed officers might foster an environment of fear and mistrust. Youth and Society published a 2008 study entitled, “School Discipline and Security: Fairness for all Students?” that evaluated perceptions of school discipline and security, and found that students report a greater sense of fairness when non-police security guards are employed rather than uniformed police officers. Importantly, this perception of fairness plays a key role in students’ tenure in school, meaning the way students understand and interpret the fair application of school rules and punishments correlates with their graduation. Growing Kings addresses school safety by advocating for safety and security policies that prioritize prevention, intervention, and relationships of trust rather than reactive discipline that fails to understand root causes and may lead to student involvement with the criminal justice system. This involves an investment in school psychologists, counselors, and social workers.
Learn more (https://www.aecf.org/work/juvenile-justice/jdai/) – Annie E. Casey Foundation
Learn More (https://jlc.org/youth-advocacy) – Juvenile Law Center
Learn more (https://dys.alabama.gov/) – Alabama Youth Services
Learn More (http://www.act4jj.org/sites/default/files/resource-files/JJDPA%20Reauthorization%20Summary%20December%202018.pdf) –
Summary of the Juvenile Reform Act of 2018.