Youth Violence and the Prison System
Survey of Composition and Literature Research Unit
Assignment:
Read the following sources carefully. Take a position that defends or challenges or qualifies the claim: Juveniles
who commit violent crimes should undergo punishments as harsh as their adult counterparts.
Refer to the sources to support your position. Avoid mere plagiarism or summary. Your argument should be central.
The sources should support or defend this argument. Refer to the sources as Source A, Source B, etc.
Reaves, Jessica. Time Magazine. “Should the Law Treat Kids and Adults Differently?”
Stimson, Charles. “Adult Punishments Should Be an Option.”
Parsell, T.J. “Behind Bars, Teenagers Become Prey.”
Campaign for Youth & Justice. “Because the Consequences Aren’t Minor”
Netter, Sarah and Friedman, Emily. ABC News. “Four Charged in California Homecoming Gang Rape.
Gang Rape Suspects Range in Age 15 to 21”
Source F: Cose, Ellis. "Minority Youth Are Disproportionately Imprisoned."
Source G: Harris, Maya. “Prison vs. Education Spending Reveals California’s Priorities”
Source H: The Chronicle. “Spending Gap between Higher Education and Prisons Narrows”
Source I: Rozzell, Liane Gay. "Alternatives to the Punishment-Oriented Juvenile Justice Model Are Necessary."
Source A:
Source B:
Source C:
Source D:
Source E:
Source A
Reaves, Jessica. Time Magazine. “Should the Law Treat Kids and Adults Differently?” May 17, 2001. <http://www.
time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,110232,00.html>
Nathaniel Brazill looks back at his mother after being found guilty
When a child kills, does he instantly become an adult? Or does he maintain some trappings of childhood,
despite the gravity of his actions? These are the questions plaguing the American legal system today, as the violent
acts of juvenile offenders continue to make headlines. Wednesday, 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was found guilty of
second-degree murder for killing his English teacher last year. The charge usually carries a prison term of up to 30
years, but Brazille’s defense team is hopeful the sentencing judge will be more lenient in this case. They have a
powerful ally: Jeb Bush. “There is a different standard for children,” the governor said after Brazill was sentenced.
“There should be some sensitivity that a 14-year-old is not a little adult.”
In March, another Florida jury sentenced 14-year-old Lionel Tate, who killed a younger girl while
practicing wrestling moves on her, to life in prison without parole. The concurrent Brazill and Tate trials served to
heighten the public misconception that juvenile violent crime is on the rise; in fact, recent figures show a precipitous
drop over the last five years.
Are we seeing a drop because children are thinking more carefully about their crimes, knowing they could
receive adult sentences? All but five states allow children of any age charged with murder to be tried as adults. The
death penalty generally isn’t an option — at least not for defendants under the age of 16; The U. S. Supreme Court
has ruled capital punishment unconstitutional for anyone who hasn’t celebrated their 16 th birthday (1989). Some
states, however, will consider 16- and 17-year-olds for the death penalty.
Or are there other factors? Defense attorneys might offer a different argument: Since the bulk of the dropoff in juvenile crime predates most states’ embrace of harsher penalties for young offenders, it is disingenuous to
assume any connection between the two. The fundamental question is, are children capable of understanding the
consequences of their actions? Maybe not; recent studies suggest that the brain’s prefrontal lobe, which some
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scientists speculate plays a crucial role in inhibiting inappropriate behavior, may not reach full development until
age 20.
It’s unlikely that America’s thirst for vengeance will be sated by scientific theory. We are, as a nation, very
much in favor of treating child criminals as adults — a recent ABC news poll showed 55 percent of us believe the
crime, not the perpetrator’s age, should be the determining factor in sentencing. Below, a few of the arguments
posited by both sides of the juvenile crime debate.
Should the U.S. justice system treat juvenile violent offenders as adults?
YES
The end result of a heinous crime remains the same, no matter who commits it. Our justice system depends upon
holding perpetrators responsible for their actions.
 Harsh sentencing acts as a deterrent to kids who are considering committing crimes. Trying children as
adults has coincided with lower rates of juvenile crimes. Light sentences don’t teach kids the lesson they
need to learn: If you commit a terrible crime, you will spend a considerable part of your life in jail.
 Kids today are more sophisticated at a younger age; they understand the implications of violence and
how to use violent weapons. It is absurd to argue that a modern child, who sees the effect of violence
around him in the news every day, doesn’t understand what killing really is. The fact that child killers know
how to load and shoot a gun is an indicator that they understand exactly what they’re doing.
NO
The juvenile prison system can help kids turn their lives around; rehabilitation gives kids a second chance.
 Successful rehabilitation, many argue, is better for society in the long run than releasing someone who’s
spent their entire young adult life in general prison population. A young person released from juvenile
prison is far less likely to commit a crime than someone coming out of an adult facility.
 Children don’t have the intellectual or moral capacity to understand the consequences of their actions;
similarly, they lack the same capacity to be trial defendants.
 Children shouldn’t be able to get deadly weapons in the first place. Adults who provide kids with guns
used in violent crimes should be held at least as accountable as the kids themselves.
SOURCE B
Stimson, Charles D. “Adult Punishments Should Be an Option.” Editorial. New York Times [New York] 5 June
2012: pag. Print.
Adult Punishments Should Be an Option
Charles D. Stimson is a senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and
co-author of “Adult Time for Adult Crimes: Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens.”
Only rarely does an under-18 juvenile defendant wind up in adult court. Yet some activists would put an end to that
practice in every instance, no matter the crime and no matter the criminal. But can they really prove that adult
punishment is never appropriate for juveniles who’ve committed adult crimes?
When courts take away trial and sentencing options, it is not possible to provide justice in every case.
The overwhelming majority of juvenile crimes, from petty vandalism to violent homicide, are handled by the
juvenile justice system, not adult courts. The separation of the two systems is a recognition of the differences
between juveniles and adults and offers juveniles, by default, greater opportunities for forgiveness and redemption.
Juvenile courts exist, in large part, to rehabilitate youth who’ve done wrong.
But that’s not possible or appropriate in every case. Some juveniles commit crimes so horrific in their depravity that
justice could not be carried out in the juvenile system. Other crimes, and their perpetrators, evince maturity
commensurate with adult punishment.
An example spanning both classes was 16-year-old Sarah Johnson’s plot to murder her parents and pin the crime on
an intruder. Her case was transferred to adult court, and Johnson was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
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A key to providing appropriate punishment across a wide range of cases is the transfer process. In some states,
judges decide whether to grant the state’s request to move a juvenile to adult court; in others, removal is automatic
for certain specified crimes, usually murder. This is how we separate out those few crimes committed by juveniles
deserving of adult trial and punishment.
Take that option away, or unduly restrict the punishments available, and it won’t be possible to provide
individualized justice in every case. Adult punishments should be available for juvenile criminals, if (as today)
sparingly applied.
SOURCE C
Parsell, T.J. “Behind Bars, Teenagers Become Prey.” Editorial. New York Times [New York] 5 June 2012: pag.
Print.
Behind Bars, Teenagers Become Prey
T.J. Parsell, a human rights activist dedicated to ending sexual violence in detention, is the author of "Fish: A
Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison."
In early 2003, I testified on Capitol Hill with Linda Bruntmyer, a mother from Texas whose 17-year-old son was
incarcerated after setting a trash bin on fire. In prison, he was raped repeatedly. He later hanged himself inside his
cell. I felt a special bond with Linda, because I too had been raped in prison at 17. It could have easily been my
mother standing there, urging Congress to end the travesty of sending juveniles to adult jails and prisons.
Most juveniles who serve time are eventually released. They will either be traumatized from sexual assault or hyperviolent from having learned to fend off the threat.
What happened to Linda’s son and me was far from unpredictable. Congressional findings in the Prison Rape
Elimination Act of 2003 posited that juveniles were five times as likely to be sexually assaulted in adult rather than
in juvenile facilities — often within their first 48 hours of incarceration. Youth advocacy groups report that juveniles
housed in adult facilities are 36 times more likely to commit suicide.
At the time I was sent to prison, for robbing a Fotomat with a toy gun, I was still a boy — physically, cognitively,
socially and emotionally — and ill equipped to respond to the sexualized coercion of older, more experienced
convicts. On my first day, I was drugged, gang raped and turned into sexual chattel.
Youth held in adult prisons are the hardest hit and easiest prey for sexual abuse. Placing juveniles in adult facilities
has devastating consequences not only for the youth but also for the communities from which they came. Eighty
percent are released before their 21st birthday, and 95 percent are released before they turn 25. They’re coming back
into society indelibly marked by what they’ve experienced — either traumatized by sexual assault, or hyper-violent
from having learned to fend off the threat.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that youth who are transferred to the adult system are approximately 34
percent more likely than youth retained in the juvenile court system to be rearrested for a felony. When research has
shown young people kept in the juvenile system are less likely to re-offend, why do we keep making the same
mistake?
There has been some progress. The standards that the Justice Department released last month, in accordance with the
Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, prevent juveniles from being housed with adult inmates or having
unsupervised contact with adult inmates in common spaces. The measures also recommend against solitary
confinement as a means of protecting young inmates. But the standards stop far short of prohibiting the placement of
minors in adult prisons, and largely ignore teenagers over 17.
There are an estimated 250,000 youth who are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults each year. Crime rates in the
U.S. have gone down, but our prison populations have steadily climbed. Part of the solution is to do something
different with the next generation of youthful offenders.
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Source D
Campaign for Youth & Justice. “Because the Consequences Aren’t Minor.”< http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.
org/documents/CFYJFS_AdultPrisons.doc>
In the majority of states, youth who are prosecuted as adults may be sentenced to serve time in adult
prisons where they may be at risk of assault, abuse, and death and will receive little to no rehabilitative treatment or
educational services.
Youth are not safe in adult prisons. A report by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s
Prisons found that “violence remains a serious problem in America’s prisons.” i A survey done in April 2006 by the
Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the National Center for State Courts and the Commission on
Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons found that Americans realize that prisons are violent. “When Americans
think about someone they know being incarcerated, 84% say they would be concerned about the person’s physical
safety.”ii Even for adults, prisons are not safe places, and youth are especially vulnerable to victimization in prisons
because of their age and size.
Compared to children in juvenile facilities:
 children in adult prisons were twice as likely to report being “beaten up” by staff; iii and
 children in adult prisons were 50% more likely to report being attacked with a weapon. iv
Youth in prisons do not have access to educational or rehabilitative programs. Youth require
additional and specialized services for which prisons do not have the resources. For example, a Human Rights
Watch report found that youth in Colorado prisons face many difficulties getting education, particularly beyond a
GED. In addition, they found that youth serving life without parole are denied access to a variety of classes. v
There are no federal protections for youth held in adult prisons. Youth sentenced as adults can be held
in adult prisons, regardless of age. The core requirements of the Federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention Act (JJDPA) do not apply to youth incarcerated in prisons.
Sentencing youth to adult prisons does not reduce crime. Youth leaving prisons not only come out
without the education and skills necessary to succeed and retain jobs, but they have also spent time with career
criminals. Studies show that youth receiving adult sanctions are more likely to re-offend than youth receiving
juvenile sanctions. A study done in Florida compared 315 “best-matched” pairs of youth. These youth were
matched based on age, race, gender, previous offenses, and such. The study found that while 37% of youth who
were given juvenile sanctions re-offended, 49% of the youth receiving adult sanctions re-offended.vi
Over the past decade, the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development has
conducted extensive research that shows that children in adult facilities face harsher settings and experience more
developmental problems than children in juvenile correctional settings, facts that lead these renowned researchers to
conclude that "trying and punishing youths as adults is an option that should be used sparingly." vii
Source E
Netter, Sarah and Friedman, Emily. ABC News. “Four Charged in California Homecoming Gang Rape. Gang Rape
Suspects Range in Age 15 to 21.” October 28, 2009. <http://abcnews.go.com/WN/charged-richmond-californiahomecoming-gang-rape/story?id=8935918>
4
Four out of five suspects arrested in connection with the publicly witnessed, hours-long gang rape of a 15year-old girl outside of her California high school's homecoming dance face charges that could send them to prison
for life, police said. Manuel Ortega, a 19-year-old former Richmond High School student, has been charged with
robbery, assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury, rape in concert [gang rape] and rape with
violence, according to Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan. The Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office is
going to ask for a life sentence for Ortega, Gagan said. His bail has been set at $1,230,000. The other three suspects
are juveniles, ages 15, 16 and 17, but are to be charged as adults, and the D.A.'s office will seek life sentences for
the trio, Gagan said. The three juveniles are being held without bail on charges of rape in concert and penetration
with an foreign object in concert. In addition, the 16-year-old will be charged with robbery. A fifth suspect, 21-yearold Salvador Rodriguez, arrested Tuesday night, has not yet been charged, although the district attorney's office
continues to investigate his role.
Estimates of the number of people present for the more-than-two-hour assault Saturday night have grown.
Initially, police believed 20 people either took part in the attack or watched it happen. Police now believe that as
many as 10 suspects took part in the gang rape, while 20 others stood by and watched the crime occur in a dimly lit
corner of the sprawling campus, according to KGO. No one who was present during the assault tried to stop it or
called police. Instead, some of those watched the attack are suspected of taking pictures, police told ABC's KGO-TV
in San Francisco. KGO reported that police were called only after someone who was not at the scene heard people
talking about the attack, which was still going on. Police officers found the girl semi-conscious, curled up near a
lunch table.
Gagan said the Richmond Police Department is pleased with the district attorney's aggressive approach in
prosecuting the case. Richmond police arrested three people Tuesday night, including the 17-year-old boy, who
turned himself in to police after authorities visited his home earlier in the day, according to KGO-TV. The 16-yearold boy and Rodriguez also were among the suspects taken into custody Tuesday night, joining two other young
men who police already had apprehended. The 15-year-old boy was arrested Monday after he was pulled out of class
for questioning. He is believed to have known the rape victim. "These are people who played a significant role in the
incident," Gagan told the Associated Press. "I'm confident that more arrests will be made."
An official with the school district said Tuesday officials were praying for the victim's recovery but also
defended school security, saying that when the students leave the dance, "we don't take them home." West Contra
Costa Unified School District spokesman Marin Trujillo told ABCNews.com that there were four police officers,
five chaperones and a host of teachers to supervise the dance, and that when the event was over a sweep was made
of the campus to make sure everyone had gone home. The corner on the outskirts of school grounds where the girl
was attacked, he said, was not part of the search. "I bet this is a learning incident," Trujillo said, referring to the way
they searched the campus. Nevertheless, the school spokesman said it's up to parents to make sure their children get
safely home from these types of dances. "Once the child leaves the dance, we don't take them home," Trujillo said.
The spokesman later told KGO, "The dance itself was a success in terms of safety. Nothing happened at the event.
We're currently exploring our protocols to make sure that we can expand them, and make sure that this isolated
incident doesn't get repeated again."
Police had a different view. "These suspects are monsters. And, I don't understand how this many people
capable of such atrocious behavior could be in one place at one time," Gagan told KGO. Dara Cashman, head of the
Contra Costa County Sex Assault Unit, indicated that witnesses who did not come to the girl's aid or call police were
unlikely to be charged with a crime unless they aided the assault.
According to news reports, the girl left the high school's homecoming dance alone around 9:30 p.m.
Saturday to get a ride home with her dad. Instead, she met up with a group of people who were drinking on the edge
of campus. "The series of events that occurred over the next 2½ hours got more severe and more vicious to where
she was ultimately gang raped and beaten, and her injuries were so severe that she had to be sent to the hospital in a
helicopter," Gagan told KGO.
Trujillo described the mood at Richmond High School is "somber." Counselors and members of the
school's crisis team have remained at the school as students -- some who are still not sure who the victim is -wonder if every absent girl was the one who was attacked. Trujillo said the school district was not notified officially
about the incident until the next morning, though some officials had heard about it on the news. Trujillo said that
school officials had recently approved a "very costly" security system, but that it had not yet been installed. Security
cameras already installed in the school are not believed to be functional, he said, but there were no cameras pointed
at the spot where the rape happened.
One student, 16-year-old Jennie Steinberg, told the Associated Press that her mother has let her transfer
from the school Tuesday. "It's not safe there at all," she said. "I'm not going back."
Trujillo said 1,688 students attend Richmond High School, which has a banner outside naming it "most
improved."
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SOURCE F
Cose, Ellis. "Minority Youth Are Disproportionately Imprisoned." Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults? Ed. Judy
Layzell. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. At Issue. Rpt. from "Race and Redemption." The American Prospect
(14 Aug. 2005). Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.
Minority Youth Are Disproportionately Imprisoned
Should Juveniles Be Tried as Adults? 2008
Ellis Cose, a columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek, is the author of many books, including Bone to Pick:
On Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge and The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in
America.
Most Americans assume that the more people are put in jail, the greater the public safety. They also believe that
racism is not a factor in the justice system. Both assumptions are incorrect. It is becoming increasingly clear that
locking up young people turns them into career criminals. And of those young people who are detained in public
facilities, two-thirds are persons of color. A study in Washington State reveals significant racial stereotyping in
juvenile cases, and another study by a team from a Chicago investigative magazine shows that blacks and Latinos
generally receive harsher sentences than whites who commit the same crimes. A change in policy is clearly needed.
Instead of committing juvenile offenders to adult facilities, early intervention and rehabilitative programs will have a
greater impact on reducing crime, and ultimately will even out racially disparate treatment.
As an attorney for the Youth Law Center, litigating largely over conditions of confinement, James Bell spent some
20 years in courtrooms across America. The scene was always much the same: Even in communities that were
overwhelmingly white, those arrested, detained, and convicted were overwhelmingly black and brown.
The statistics are now so well-known they have almost lost their ability to shock: roughly 2 million men behind bars,
the majority of whom are Latino and black. At every juncture—from suspicion to conviction—people of color,
especially blacks, are significantly more likely than whites to get tangled up in America's system of justice. And
juvenile statistics mirror those for adults: Roughly two-thirds of juveniles detained in public facilities are persons of
color—nearly twice their proportion in the general population. If you are young, Latino, and male, your odds of
being in juvenile detention are more than twice those of your Anglo counterpart. If you are Native American, odds
are three times as likely. If you are black, five times as likely. We have reached the point where the only bond
linking many black fathers, sons, and grandsons is time spent behind bars. Imagine a great conveyer belt onto which
will stumble a third of America's black males (if current trends continue), leading toward confinement and away
from every positive option in life, and you have some sense of the crises upon us.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), launched in 1992, was inspired
in large measure by a Casey Foundation-funded project in Broward County, Florida, aimed at reducing the number
of young people behind bars. According to the foundation's Bart Lubow, the initiative runs "against the grain of a
fundamental mythology" that more people behind bars automatically leads to greater public safety. It also runs
contrary to the widespread assumption that race and racism have essentially been banished from the justice system.
Blacks and Latinos generally got stiffer penalties than whites who had committed the same drug crimes.
Racism in the Justice System
That assumption is not yet supported by facts. In a review of 233 juvenile cases in Washington state, sociologists
George Bridges and Sara Steen found that racial stereotyping played an unmistakable role in how offenders were
viewed. Probation officers preparing sentencing reports tended to characterize whites as potentially good people
who were victims of unfortunate circumstances, whereas blacks were more likely to be seen as intrinsically bad,
according to their study published in the American Sociological Review in 1998. Not coincidentally, after analyzing
6
six years of court records, a team from The Chicago Reporter found in 2002 that blacks and Latinos generally got
stiffer penalties than whites who had committed the same drug crimes.
Caring About Minority Kids
There is no "silver programmatic bullet," Lubow observes. Creating a saner, more equitable juvenile-justice system
requires specific local actions tailored to local conditions, on a range of fronts from staffing to policing to nurturing
relationships among stakeholders. The Casey Foundation also found that without explicitly focusing on racial
disparity, localities were not likely to do much to reduce it—notwithstanding the fact that all racial disparities do not
stem from explicit bias. In Illinois, for instance, a law that required that juveniles be tried as adults if caught selling
drugs within 1,000 feet of a school ended up affecting mostly nonwhites—because white drug dealers, operating in
the more spatially dispersed suburbs, were less likely to be near schools.
We somehow care much less about urban violence, especially when it involves minority kids.
Some of the worst impacts are obviously on the young people themselves, who, among other things, are likely to
have a radically shortened lifespan due to violence. Researchers at Northwestern University found that juveniles in
Cook County who had been in detention were more than four times as likely to die (over an eight-year period) than
their matched peers who had managed to avoid being locked up. Of the 65 deaths that researchers recorded during
the study, all were violent. "Everyone died awful, violent deaths—run over by gang members, stabbed by a
boyfriend," Linda Teplin, a member of the Northwestern team, told a reporter for HealthDay News. Teplin went on
to observe that the number of deaths among the youngsters she studied in Cook County was higher than the total
death toll in all mass school shootings between 1990 and 2000. Yet while concern was showered on those largely
white victims of mass murder, little was shown for the mostly minority victims of Cook County. "We somehow care
much less about urban violence, especially when it involves minority kids," Teplin concluded.
Whether or not politicians care less about such kids, more and more are realizing that locking up young people and
figuratively throwing away the key is an expensive policy failure. As a growing body of research is coming to show,
early and sensible intervention reduces the likelihood that young offenders will end up as adult criminals. Young
wrongdoers are less likely to err again if they are kept out of adult facilities, where they generally become not only
more accepting of a life of crime but also more comfortable with committing more serious crimes.
Despite what used to be received wisdom—"nothing works"—it is becoming very clear that some things do work,
that it is possible to simultaneously reduce the burden of young offenders on society, increase their odds of success
in life, and eliminate much of the bias in the system. That does not necessarily mean that the old ways are dead. It
does mean, however, that they should be. For, tough-on-crime rhetoric notwithstanding, it is becoming harder than
ever to justify putting young people on that giant conveyer belt that bypasses hope and heads directly to hell.
Source G
Harris, Maya. “Prison vs. Education Spending Reveals California’s Priorities.” May 29, 2007. <http://articles.
sfgate.com/2007-05-29/opinion/17244077_1_school-dropouts-school-diploma-spending-on-higher-education>
It has been said that a government's budget isn't only a statement of priorities, but also a reflection of a
society's values. California's proposed budget reveals skewed priorities and hollow values. For the first time, and
unique among large states, California will soon spend more on its prisons than on its public universities. It has been
projected that over the next five years, the state's budget for locking up people will rise by 9 percent annually,
compared with its spending on higher education, which will rise only by 5 percent. By the 2012-2013 fiscal year,
$15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared with $15.3 billion spent on educating them.
Yet, despite this historic increase in prison funding, leading legislators -- including supporters of the increase -- and
even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office agree that this is simply throwing good money after bad, given the rank
mismanagement plaguing California's corrections system.
But they'll spend the money anyway. More prison spending will mean better pay for the highest paid, most
politically influential prison personnel in the nation, as well as more prisons, but no one is certain it will result in a
better corrections system.
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There's no uncertainty, however, about the benefits that flow from investing in education. Nothing predicts
future success better than a good education, and nothing guarantees failure more than the lack of one. "Today,
education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments," the U.S. Supreme Court stated in
its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. "It is the very foundation of good citizenship ... . In these days,
it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an
education."
Studies have ratified the truth of those words, more than 50 years later. According to a recent report by
Northeastern University, the median annual earnings in 2004-2005 of young black men with a bachelor's degree
were 2.5 times those of high school graduates and 14.5 times higher than those of high school dropouts.
The correlation between the lack of educational opportunities and imprisonment could not be more direct.
The same study found that 18-to-24-year-old male high school dropouts had an incarceration rate 31 times that of
males who graduated from a four-year college. If you're a young black male with no high school diploma, it's worse:
You're 60 times more likely to end up behind bars than your classmates who earned a bachelor's degree.
Despite these realities, we not only continue to feed the prison system at the expense of funding education,
we've also blurred the lines separating the educational and criminal justice systems, creating a school-to-prison
pipeline with a predictable and steady flow. Police have become an increasing presence in our public elementary,
middle and high schools. Schools are spending millions of dollars to hire their own police forces or contracting with
local authorities. Kids are routinely searched before being allowed into the building, under surveillance by video
cameras in hallways and subjected to random searches of their backpacks and lockers.
Behavior that used to warrant a trip to the principal's office can now result in a trip to jail on charges of
assault. Kids not old enough to drive have been arrested for behavior ranging from throwing a temper tantrum to
talking during school assemblies and violating the dress code. It's kids of color who bear the disproportionate brunt
of these zero-tolerance policies.
Something is clearly wrong when the government's most effective affirmative-action program is the
preference people of color receive when entering not college, but the criminal-justice system, and when the state's
budget proposes to build up prisons instead of universities.
SOURCE H
The Chronicle. “Spending Gap between Higher Education and Prisons Narrows” State of California. 2009
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SOURCE I
Rozzell, Liane Gay. "Alternatives to the Punishment-Oriented Juvenile Justice Model Are Necessary." Juvenile
Crime. Ed. Louise I. Gerdes. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "These Are Our
Children: New Models Are Transforming Juvenile Justice." Sojourners Magazine 38 (June 2009): 7. Opposing
Viewpoints In Context. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.
Alternatives to the Punishment-Oriented Juvenile Justice Model Are Necessary
In the following viewpoint, Liane Gay Rozzell claims that costly punishment-oriented juvenile justice responses to
troubled youth increase the likelihood that they will re-offend, often more violently. Youth imprisoned for
nonviolent offenses are often abused by prisoners and guards, she maintains. Moreover, the only lessons these youth
learn is how to be more criminal. Proven community-based and restorative justice models give youths a chance to
take responsibility for their actions and learn to be productive adults, she concludes. Rozzell is executive director of
Families & Allies of Virginia's Youth.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
According to Rozzell, how much does it cost per child per year to imprison youth in facilities like the one
where her son was incarcerated?
What statistics does the author cite to support her claim that huge racial and ethnic disparities characterize
the US juvenile justice system?
What restorative justice practices does the author identify?
When young people commit offenses, adults must respond—but too often our response to troubled youth, in the
form of local and state juvenile justice systems, does much more harm than good.
Harmful Programs
One big problem: About 200,000 youth are prosecuted as adults each year, most for nonviolent offenses. Some of
them are kids like Jay, a 14-year-old who was held in an adult jail to await trial. Too young to be admitted to the
jail's GED [General Educational Development] course, Jay spent 15 months locked up without any education or
programs. After he was finally found not guilty, his grandmother struggled to get him into a school where he could
make up for lost time and heal from the trauma of being jailed with adults.
Children who spend time in adult prisons and jails are at much higher risk for assault, abuse, and suicide. They don't
get the services they need, and they are more likely to re-offend—sooner, more often, and more violently—than
youth who stay in the juvenile system.
We are also wrong to spend so much money and effort incarcerating young people in juvenile prisons or "training
schools"—again, often for nonviolent offenses. My son was one of them. He was not a danger to the public, but was
sent to a youth prison, where he was beaten by gang members and subjected to abuse and harassment by guards.
Facilities like that one, which costs state taxpayers more than $102,000 per child per year, are abysmal failures, with
high recidivism rates. Imprisoning kids to "teach them a lesson" is an almost surefire way of teaching them how to
be more criminal.
Our public school systems have also contributed to the problem by adopting punitive "zero tolerance" policies and
relying on police officers to enforce discipline, helping to create a "school to prison pipeline" for an increasing
number of students, especially poor youth and youth of color. Schools are no safer, but students are being arrested
for acts that used to be resolved by a trip to the principal's office, after-school detention, or suspension.
We have also come to rely on the juvenile justice system to deal with youth whose primary issues are mental illness,
substance abuse, and trauma. Up to 70 percent of youth in the system suffer from mental health disorders.
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Finally, huge racial and ethnic disparities characterize the juvenile justice system: Although minorities make up onethird of U.S. youth, they are almost two-thirds of those who are locked up. Youth of color are treated more harshly
than white youth in all parts of the system.
Giving Youth a Chance to Change
How should we respond to delinquent young people? By using the growing body of cost-effective, evidence-based
programs that give youth a fair chance to change, to heal, to take responsibility for their actions, and to develop into
positive, productive adults.
Proven, smarter, saner, and safer alternatives to the failed punishment-oriented model include community-based
prevention and intervention programs built on a positive youth development model (which builds on a youth's
strengths rather than focusing solely on deficiencies); wraparound social services; and family-focused therapeutic
interventions.
The juvenile justice reform movement is making progress. Communities all over the country are safely reducing
their reliance on locked facilities. Some have begun to reduce racial disparities in their juvenile justice systems,
using tools such as screenings that cut bias in detention admission decisions. For nonviolent youth, day and evening
reporting centers provide a place where they can be supervised and gain skills before their court hearings.
Some communities are turning to restorative justice practices—including peer juries, peacemaking circles, and
family group conferencing—to create better outcomes for victims, offenders, and the community. Schools that adopt
positive behavior support, which systematically reinforces and rewards good behavior, are creating peaceful learning
environments—and boosting achievement.
A stronger Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, currently before Congress, would drastically reduce
the number of youth who are locked in detention for truancy or being runaways, push states to keep children out of
adult jails, and require states to do more to reduce ethnic disparities. Legislators are also considering the Youth
PROMISE Act,1 which would fund effective, community-chosen approaches to preventing and curbing delinquency.
We will only succeed when we stop demonizing and discarding troubled youth. These are our children. For our sake
and theirs, we must take responsibility for how we respond to them.
. Gibbons, J. J., & Katzenbach, N. B. (2006, June). Confronting confinement. The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons.
. Ibid.
. Forst, M., Fagan, J., & Vivona, T. S. (1989). Youth in prisons and training schools: Perceptions and consequences of the treatment-custody dichotomy. Juvenile and Family Court Journal
39(1).
iv
. Ibid.
v
. Human Rights Watch. (2005, February). Thrown away.
vi
. Bishop, D. M., Frazier, C. E., Lane, J., & Lanza-Kaduce, L. (2002, January). Juvenile transfer to criminal court study: Final report. p. 15. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office
of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
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iii
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