Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/black/)
Black men who were incarcerated between the ages of 15 and 22, and tracked for roughly 40 years ending in 2018, had a significantly lower life expectancy after their release from prison than non-Blacks, according to a recently released Boston Medical Center-based study.
In my 15 years of working with youth who cycle through the criminal justice system — initially as a social worker and, now, as a lawyer — I’ve represented exactly two white clients. Mainly, my clients have been Latinx kids and Black kids like that one whose tragic story I’ve partly shared. Too often, Black and Latinx kids aren’t granted the same allowances, including diversion from incarceration, that are given to white youth deemed guilty of the very same infractions.
Part of the solution lies in projects such as Ambassadors for Racial Justice, which trains juvenile defenders across the nation on how to combat systemic racism through case advocacy, community activism and legislation. Georgetown Law Professor Kristin Henning launched the program and National Juvenile Defender Center Executive Director Mary Ann Scali has been a driving force in its development; both of have been battling racial inequities in the juvenile legal system for more than 25 years.
The tally of Black youth detained in juvenile facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic reached a record high last January, while the same count for white youth was the second lowest since the Annie E. Casey Foundation started tracking that data. The foundation’s most recent monthly analysis showed that, as of Feb. 1, whites had spent less time in detention than Blacks, who also were incarcerated for longer periods than they’d been detained before the pandemic started. Aimed at measuring the pandemic’s impact on 144 juvenile justice systems across 33 states, the Casey Foundation survey started in March 2020.
By its most recent count, during January 2021, there was a:
6% decline in the population of non-Latinx white youth in juvenile detention. 2% uptick in the population of Latinx youth in juvenile detention.
In 2018, about 6 out of 10 youth found guilty of an offense – more than 130,000 young people nationally — were placed on probation. Black youth have continued to be overrepresented among youth on probation, and at every point in the justice system. Structural racism drives harsher treatment of Black youth, who are more likely than white youth to be arrested, incarcerated, placed on probation and, when they don’t meet the terms of probation, plunged deeper into the criminal justice system. What’s the result? Black youth comprised just 14 percent of the general population, but 36 percent of youth on probation and 41 percent of incarcerated youth.
To help probation departments reduce the scope of probation, especially for Black youth, we just released a new, research-informed framework.
When I was a kid, around 10 or 11, I loved fantasy novels, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. I read these books over and over, and with my friend Michael would act out the various scenes of the books. We would run around the yard with toy swords and trash can lids for shields, battling monsters until it got too dark to play any longer. One day we were pretending we were wizards, casting spells and dispensing vague wisdom to our imaginary comrades. As part of our costumes we made hoods out of pillow cases, and were blithely going about our business when my dad came home.