Youth in a blue prisoner jumper holds a book behind his back and is the last in a line of juveniles who are at a detention center get books as a part of a summer reading program.

National report highlights severe cost of inadequate juvenile justice system

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Washington, D.C. – Fight Crime: Invest in Kids released their report “Costly, Punitive Juvenile Justice Approaches Undermine Healthy Adolescent Development,” during a virtual briefing that brought together experts to discuss the urgent need for reform in the juvenile justice system. One key highlight: Rather than helping to fix juvenile crime in America, our current justice system often makes it worse. The report shows that our juvenile justice system often fails to consider the realities of adolescent development. Adolescents, unlike adults, are still maturing cognitively, meaning they lack the capacity to effectively self-regulate, plan for the future, or control impulses.

Alternatives to prison: Group of multicultural arms an hands forming circle reaching to each other with multi-colored puzzle pieces

To end the age of incarceration, three communities pioneer a developmental approach

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People ages 18 to 25 are over-represented at every stage of the criminal legal system and have the highest recidivism rate of any age group. It is obvious that we are responding badly to the developmental needs of these emerging adults — and “we” includes everything from schools and health care to law enforcement, judicial and correctional systems.

California: Young men sit srpind table with built-in chairs in large ron and stairs leading ro balcony above with doors to several rooms.

California: Is this how you want your kids to be treated?

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“How would you want your kids, if they were in these facilities, to be treated?” 

That question was raised by formerly incarcerated youth and current juvenile justice advocate James Martinez at a meeting of California’s Board of State and Community Corrections. The BSCC is a state agency tasked with overseeing jails and county-level juvenile facilities in California. In early November 2022, the board’s Executive Steering Committee, met to begin rewriting critically important rules governing juvenile camps, ranches and halls.

Learning to thrive after doing time: young black man in graduation garb standing next to older black woman smiling

Learning to thrive after doing time

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To some in the audience, Jeremy White sounding like he was preaching.

“I was 19 years old when I got incarcerated. I was facing 120 years,” White, 42, said, his words deliberate, his cadence suited for a Sunday morning pulpit, his Tennessee drawl full on.

“ … [I began] remembering where I came from … ”

“That’s good, that’s good!” Vickie Woodard exclaimed.

toll of his absence; women supporting prisoner Almeer Nance: older black woman looking at photo while younger woman looks off to the right

The toll of his absence: the women supporting prisoner Almeer Nance

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When her father, Almeer Nance, was 16, he was sentenced to a minimum of 51 years and, after that, another 25 years for abetting a robbery of a Knoxville Radio Shack and being an accomplice to the murder of store employee Joseph Ridings, 21. The shooter, then-19-year-old Robert Vincent Manning, was sentenced to life without parole.

Gang-banger reform: Closeup profile of Kennebrew - Black man in dark-framed glasses wearing multi-color geometric print mask

A gang-banger since 8th grade, former Blood sets a new course with a former prosecutor’s help

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There is no recent official count of how many individuals have departed gang life. In 2012, the most recent year that the U.S. Department of Justice National Gang Center estimated the data, roughly 850,000 members were in some 30,700 youth gangs across the country. Those numbers decreased from 1996 through 2002, then increased steadily over the next decade. A 2014 study in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology found that 70% of gang members joined as adolescents and left before adulthood. 

Why do young people join, why do they leave and how do they stay away?