Jailing Juveniles

Children should not be held in adult jails.

Friday, August 10, 2007 - Washington Post

MORE CHILDREN are going to jail -- too often even before they have been convicted.

In the District, the average daily count of juveniles being held in adult jail before trial has nearly tripled in the past year, according to a recent report from the Campaign for Youth Justice. It's unclear whether this rise is attributable to an increase in serious crimes by juveniles, a surge in police patrols or tougher decisions by prosecutors who choose when to try teenagers as adults. Whatever the cause, the increase in children held in adult jails should be reversed as a matter of public safety and decency.

Studies have shown that children incarcerated in adult jails are more likely to be arrested again and to commit graver new offenses. In the D.C. Jail, which holds inmates awaiting trial or serving short sentences, juveniles are kept apart from adults, but they benefit from little of the rehabilitative programming and structure required at juvenile detention centers. Currently, only those needing special education, for example, can go to class. Devon Brown, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections, said the agency has negotiated with the D.C. public school system to begin providing classes for all juveniles at the D.C Jail starting on Oct. 1. These efforts are laudable, but, as Mr. Brown agrees, an adult jail does not have the resources, staffing or training to treat these youths.

Children are developmentally different from adults. Neurological research, including a study presented before the 2005 Supreme Court decision striking down capital punishment for juveniles, has shown that the parts of the brain that manage moral reasoning and impulse control do not fully develop until a person reaches his or her early to mid 20s. Experts agree that teenagers who've gotten themselves into trouble need structure, counseling and directed programming. Troubled youths should not be allowed -- as they currently are at the D.C. Jail -- to spend most of their days sleeping.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons knows this. In the District, juveniles who are tried as adults and convicted and sentenced to prison time of more than six months are turned over to the Bureau of Prisons for incarceration. But even though they were held in adult jails before trial, the agency is legally barred from keeping them in adult prisons after conviction, according to bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley. Instead, they must be transferred to juvenile facilities, where they remain until age 18.

Surely this law exists because exposing troubled children to less structured and more dangerous adult jails can only harden them and lead to more crime, more arrests and more expensive imprisonment. Jailing juveniles in adult facilities is a bad investment of public funds and an investment in worse fortroubled American youths.