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Correcting Juvenile Corrections
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16963 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1990 |
1,087 Words |
| Author
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Ira M. Schwartz
Ira M. Schwartz is director of the Center for the Study of
Youth Policy at the University of Michigan. His most recent
publication is (In)justice for Juveniles - Rethinking the Best
Interests of the Child (Lexington Books, 1989). |
Fighting juvenile crime is a multibillion-dollar business in the United States. State and local politicians and juvenile justice officials will spend approximately $1.5 billion in 1990 just to incarcerate young offenders in detention centers, youth training schools, and juvenile prisons. Hundreds of millions more will be spent on police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, juvenile courts, probation officers, and parole workers.
Public concern about the juvenile crime problem and the widespread availability of drugs promises to push the level of expenditures up significantly in the 90s. Elected public officials, ever sensitive to the demands of their constituents, are advocating tougher and more costly policies are enacted, policymakers, juvenile justice officials, and the public-at-large would be well advised to step back and take a hard look at this problem.
Juvenile justice expenditures mushroomed during the period from 1977 to 1987. This was largely due to "get tough" policies that were implemented throughout the country. For example, elected public officials in practically every state supported legislation that allowed more juveniles to be prosecuted as adults and stiffened penalties for those young offenders who were kept in the juveniles system. Despite this, the best available evidence indicates that, at best, we have been able to only hold the line on the juvenile crime problem. For example, the rates of serious juvenile violent and property crimes remained relatively stable during those years. Moreover, most criminologists believe that the stability in the rates is largely the result of the changing demographics of the youth population, no because of state and local juvenile crime control measures.
One clear result of the "get tough" policies of the past decade is that there are significantly more young people incarcerated in juvenile detention centers ad correctional facilities. In fact, the increase has been so great that more than half of the juvenile training schools in the country are overcrowded.
Unfortunately, there is no credible evidence that confining more juveniles in large and impersonal correctional facilities is effective in curbing rates of recidivism. In fact, just the opposite appears to be true. The few available careful follow-up studies reveal recidivism rates as high as 75 percent or more. In testimony on October 13, 1989, before a legislative committee in Michigan, L.A. Abrams, the director of the state's youth corrections system, reported that more then 40 percent of the graduates
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