Juvenile detention is short-term confinement, primarily used after a youth has been arrested but before a court has determined the youth's innocence or guilt. Pretrial detention is appropriate only when a court believes a young person to be at risk of committing crimes or fleeing during court processing. Still, others are in detention centers while waiting for a disposition or a placement after a disposition.
(The Annie E. Casey Foundation)
Since I was a schoolgirl, I have always wanted to help other people during group training, mentorship, or leading projects. Retrospectively as I got older, I realized that my desire to help came from the mixture of opportunities and experiences offered by my parents, a nurse, and a military officer. I know how important it was to have good guides, a safe and positive environment, and ways to explore life as a child. I always feel a tug at my heart when I hear people tell me about the boundaries they had as children, especially those who had highly restrictive parents when it came to getting out in the world. Parents who did not let them go to camp or away with friends for fear of what would happen to them, had to follow a particular dress code, could only eat certain things, and had little experience doing things on their own. While I understand the need for parents to keep their children safe from harm, I sometimes think that restricted young people can become something or someone they are not when there is no room to stretch at home.
I remember after high school finding out so many of the people deemed "perfect" went wild once they were outside of their parent's watchful eyes, getting into drugs, drinking, and skipping class in college. How many times does this become a reality for young people? Often it is seen as a stage in life that most people will grow out of, and at the other end of the spectrum, it becomes an ongoing life problem burdening the young person, their families, and society.
Few parents want to discuss their children's problems outside of family or friend settings, so a lot of times, issues become overlooked until they have grown to be unmanageable. What happens when the problem grows and becomes part of the juvenile justice system?
This significant problem swept under the rug is at the epicenter of the justice system and may hold the key to improving prison rates in the future. I reached out to Dr. Jennifer Peck, an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida, to find out more. Her research interests focus on racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system, treatment of disadvantaged groups throughout juvenile court processing, and special populations in courts and corrections. Dr. Peck's work focuses on a long-standing problem of racial inequality in the justice system and bringing them to light for a change. Her recent publications appear in Justice Quarterly, Law and Human Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, and Race and Justice: An International Journal. Dr. Peck is passionate about advocating for youth in the justice system by regularly revealing how young people are treated like adults instead of children going through the challenges of adolescence.
My Interview with Dr. Jennifer Peck
Is the U.S. tougher on youth than other countries?
In terms of the U.S. being tougher on youth compared to other countries, I would agree with this. Unfortunately, not every government can provide accurate statistics about the number of youth incarcerated worldwide, it's not presently known, but certain agencies have estimated that more than 1 million children are detained throughout our world. But other agencies have found that the U.S. leads our industrial world with the number and percentage of children in detention and residential facilities, according to a 2019 United Nations report. Even though we have been incarcerating youth at fewer numbers and rates than previous years, we are still far more doing this than other countries are, and that's just one thing in terms of incarceration.
One example I think about is that typically in the United States, our juvenile court has jurisdiction over a youth. Depending on what age a child is, will they be handled in the juvenile justice system or the criminal justice system? There's an incredible amount of variation across the country. Some states do not have a lower limit meaning a youth of any age could be arrested and referred to our juvenile justice system. If a child is 16 years old, maybe compared to 18, they can automatically be waived to our adult criminal justice system. So even though they are biologically 16, still considered a youth legally, they are viewed as an adult, and that doesn't necessarily happen in other countries.
There is a push to raise the age with juvenile court jurisdiction.
So individuals who are 18, 19, and 20 years old to keep them under juvenile court jurisdiction. For example, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, are looking to raise the age to 20. In some other European countries, Germany, the Netherlands, they apply juvenile sanctions. They put individuals in facilities and courts who are still 18 to 21 years old. They still understand that some adolescent behaviors are going on even when they are between 18 and 20. I think that that's an example of why the U.S. is trying to raise the age to 18. Other countries are noticing differences in children and adolescents compared to adults, even up to 21.
If we're keeping youth 18 and younger incarcerated, of course, we're going to have higher numbers than some other countries, depending on what we legally consider a juvenile.
Explain status offenses. How should they be dealt with in the future?
Research shows that most youth will outgrow their misbehavior without extensive treatment. Interventions technically should be short-term, keeping kids in their community minimally disruptive to not have them start to go through the pipeline of the juvenile justice system. There's this inner connection between politics, the economy, social structure, and our justice systems. If we look back historically, many of the laws and statutes made by our juvenile justice system created by the local and national government are based on perceptions of what to do for youth who misbehave. So it's one of the ways government uses to control children versus rehabilitate them and treat them. The criminal justice system that controls adults was starting to trickle down to youth engaging in what they were saying are illegal behaviors, even though we know that children are different from adults in numerous ways. So, that's where I think we talk about various statutes, like what is a status offense versus what is a delinquent offense.
What do we determine is something that needs to have corrective action by our juvenile justice system? Status offenses in our system are basic behaviors that youth have engaged in that would not be illegal if they were adults. The conduct is only criminal because the person is a juvenile. Some examples could be drinking alcohol, running away from home, violating curfew, truancy from school, and incorrigibility at home.
Our juvenile justice system is not a federal system. Every single state has its separate system with different statutes and laws, and procedures. Depending on what state you're in, youth may be referred to juvenile court for a status offense, but in another state, child welfare, or another system.
Some status offenses are handled in the juvenile court or considered children in need of services or families in need of assistance. Some of these status offenses in the states don't even go into the juvenile court because they do not want to have youth contact that system, but it all depends on where you live. Some argue that youth who commit status offenses are engaging in typical youth and young adult behaviors. Many juveniles may experiment with drinking alcohol and violating curfew. Still, other behaviors may be chronically running away or missing school consistently that could demonstrate that these youth may have underlying needs that our juvenile justice system could address through some community-based services.
There's a fine line. One individual skipping school once a month, do they need to contact the juvenile court, or are we seeing, for example, a girl who is consistently running away. There's some underlying problem that technically is a status offense, but it may be that this youth has specific risks and needs that we could try to address with intervention in our system. There are differences in the severity and culmination of status offenses compared to delinquent or standard crimes that we would see in our criminal justice system.
How can being detained affect a young person?
Placing youth in detention naturally means that they're removed from their home and their family environment. So they're missing days in school, they're not able to attend work if they have a job, any sports activities or other responsibilities. School counseling treatment and rehabilitation are available to youth in the longer-term residential facilities, but detention centers are meant to be short-term housing. Specifically, I'm more familiar with our juvenile justice system here in Florida. Those youth in detention receive education, mental health, substance abuse counseling, and health care while in custody. But at the same time, you know, once you're removing youth from their home, they're going to be missing out on their natural daily routine.
Being held in detention exacerbates the feelings of being abandoned. Suppose they're placed into a facility, not in their typical home environment; unfortunately, negative situations can happen. In that case, detention centers should be for youth in certain circumstances. Historically around the 1990s, the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, or JDP, where the primary funding comes from and the national information about juvenile justice. They reported substantial issues with juvenile detention centers: Inadequate health care, lack of treatment services, excessive use of solitary confinement, and even physical restraints.
In what ways can conditions in juvenile detention centers be improved?
Throughout the last two decades, there have been significant reform efforts around trying to reduce these instances. We're seeing a lot of these facilities closing in the previous ten years, which naturally would go ahead and reduce the cases of negative situations happening in detention because we're finding that we're able to keep youth in their communities without seeing this increase in crime. It's a two-tailed effort for detention centers that are still opening; reforming the conditions of detention, decreasing the length of stay for kids there, and not placing youth in confinement unless they're considered a flight risk or a public safety issue.
What role do parents play in the misbehavior of their children?
Unfortunately, sometimes there are situations where a parent may say, I can't control my child, or the parent who is more involved says, we are having some issues. Maybe it is a thing of just learning how to communicate more, some family type of therapy. The juvenile justice system focuses on the best interest of the child and more individualized rehabilitation; therefore, the system can try to help form a plan of how to meet the needs and address the risks for that family.
Children are honest, innocent bystanders sometimes, and even kind of victims of their parents' circumstances, whether it's the individual behavior of the parents or larger societal issues. For families who live in poverty, unemployment, residential instability, children can't escape from crime-ridden environments. Their childhoods are very different compared to their affluent peers.
Justice involved youth share very similar characteristics, impoverished childhoods, abuse or neglect, trauma, family instability, limited employment opportunities. Many of these children are born into this situation that they can't control, children of the poor, those with less-educated parents. They don't have the resources necessary to overcome their obstacles sometimes.
We want to look at the individual behavior of the youth and the parents or take a step back and look at larger and historical structural and economic inequalities of families that have been for generations in that type of system. I don't think parents can automatically be blamed for the behavior of their children. Still, sometimes I think there needs to be a lesser focus on what the youth did and the individual decisions of the families. Then, we should focus on our more significant structural inequalities that translated to these long stemming problems for impoverished families. It's almost like thinking about the larger picture versus those individual decisions. For example, it could be single parents who work multiple jobs and cannot supervise youth during the day. So, if a juvenile is getting in trouble during the day, it's not necessarily that the parent doesn't want to supervise them. Still, they're pulled in multiple directions because they must provide for the family. If a youth is brought into our juvenile justice system, those risk assessment instruments, those types of interviews that they have with court actors can get more of the larger picture of what's going on with the family and try to help address some of those issues.
What puts youth at risk for ending up in a juvenile detention center?
There are multiple options. Detention is this broad term used whenever housing youth in a facility when they're under the custody of our juvenile justice system. When a child is first referred to the juvenile court, they can be placed in detention when they're initially arrested, and they're awaiting their initial appearance. The court is deciding to ensure the youth will come to their first hearing. That's what we talk about in terms of pretrial or pre-adjudication detention.
Then youth can also be held in detention after this initial hearing throughout the court process before their final case outcome or disposition is determined. They're ensuring they're still going to continue to come to all their hearings and meetings. They can be held in detention when they're waiting to be placed in a long-term residential facility because detention is supposed to be short-term care only. For example, they're waiting for their hearings or waiting to be placed in a longer-term residential facility. We can use the terms juvenile detention or residential facilities interchangeably, but those facilities are technically longer-term placements; in a detention center concerning pretrial or pre-adjudication detention.
When youth are initially arrested and brought in, they can be detained if they allegedly committed a specific offense that is deemed severe enough by the juvenile justice system. We're talking about crimes where a youth reportedly had a firearm, a violent offense, certain situations like that, where they may be at risk to hurt other people or hurt themselves and not come to their next court date. So there might be some statutes that if you're being charged with aggravated assault, you're going to be detained moving forward because we should keep them there for public safety issues. Another situation, unfortunately, that happens, and this goes back to our parenting conversation, is youth can end up in detention if there's not a parent or guardian who can come and pick them up.
A delay in picking up a child is an example of an unintended consequence of our detention process. Let's say a child is arrested and brought to an assessment center. They're considered a low risk to recidivate. Maybe it was a trespassing situation where they don't need to be detained because they believe that the young person will come back for their hearings. They think that they're not at risk at all. But then what if the parent doesn't have a working cell phone or a house phone, or they're working at a job where they're unable to pick up their child? As a result, that kid must stay in detention overnight.
Why does juvenile detention reform matter?
An estimated 200,000 youth under 18 are sent into the adult criminal justice system each year, often for misdemeanor offenses. Approximately 60,000 teens are held in juvenile detention facilities on any given day in this country.
These young adults face a host of barriers to their re-entry into the community. The stigma of incarceration can carry throughout their lives, from finding a place to live to securing a job. These youth are the most disconnected from opportunities, relationships, and experiences that are critical to helping them rebuild their lives, putting them at a considerable disadvantage.
Research shows that young adults involved in the juvenile justice system are disproportionately low-income and minority, are diagnosed with learning disabilities and have experienced abuse and other forms of hardship.
This issue affects all of us. Our communities and businesses all pay the price for youth disconnection in wasted talent, diminished communities, lost earnings and tax revenues, and increased social services. (Opportunity Nation)
Do you think the experiences many young people had during the pandemic will lead to increased problems among youth?
Research has shown that any time spent in detention in terms of being away from your family and friends, your routine can negatively impact you. Especially with COVID, when youth are still being detained, in-person visits were halted entirely. There was video conferencing only. The release of young people into the community is positive with this pandemic because they were still together, with their families. Still, if we look at this in terms of the pandemic and mental health and potential increased problems, I think it's possible, but I think it's also something that all of us, regardless of age, are having to deal with right now.
I think many of us need structure, routines, stability in our lives, and the pandemic turned that upside down for all of us. Even though there was that decrease in referrals to the juvenile justice system, this could also be attributed to youth attending school, closing of recreational areas, social distancing mandates. We're starting to see increased mental health needs, increases in family conflict, and decreases in educational attainment this past year. These can have short and long-term effects for not only youth but all of us. While I believe it's a positive note not to see an increase in juvenile crime. Looking at the larger picture, I think that all of us have been going through some things throughout this past year.
We need to all be conscious of our own mental health needs and then definitely for children as well, because sometimes they may not be realizing what they're feeling unless you start to notice some acting out. It's a time for us to be more aware of how we're feeling and how our children and our family are feeling.
How can parents prevent these types of situations from happening to their children?
Adolescence is a time of irrational thinking, the inability to assess consequences, emotions influence youth judgment so much more than adults. Adolescents are emotionally charged, which compromises their decision-making ability. Those reward centers more heavily influence them in their brain. I think it's time for the entire country to understand children are different.
If there's potential volunteering or mentoring services specifically in underserved communities; where there are numerous different types of community-based programs that would love volunteers. Even small Google searches about the juvenile justice system and contacting probation officers or court actors there about opportunities to do after-school activities with youth or if there's youth in detention centers. In Hillsborough County a few years ago, we had yoga instructors going into the detention centers to have the kids take yoga classes because it's just a way to help build connections and mentorships. Realize that these kids are just kids they're not necessarily this separate label of juvenile offenders.
Race and the Juvenile Justice System
According to Columbia University Justice Lab Report, African American male emerging adults comprised nearly 40 percent of all emerging adults admitted to state and federal prisons in the United States in 2021. They were 7 to 9 times more likely to end up in prison compared to their white peers.
Why is there so much disparity in race and class in the juvenile justice system?
The issue of race has been an issue since America began, and it's the same thing with the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, the presence of racial disparities has been evident in the system since its inception. Racial disparities are one of the first things that stand out in what the juvenile justice system looks like. For example, The Sentencing Project is a foundation and an organization that focuses on disparities in our juvenile court. Black youth are four times more likely than their white peers to be held in these juvenile facilities. Even though we're starting to see fewer youth held in facilities, the racial gap is beginning to get smaller, but it's still clearly evident.
The black youth placement rate was 315 per 100,000, and then whites were 72 per 100,000.
Something new with COVID is happening; we're starting to see white kids released from detention centers at a higher rate than their black peers. Kids of color have already been detained for more extended periods before the COVID pandemic.
It's so complex and multi-faceted. These two broad explanations explain why we see these disparities and how they're increasing or decreasing throughout the years. One of them is our differential offending explanation; that means that minority youth engage in more severe and more frequent offending, more so than whites. Since they are engaging in more serious crimes more often than whites, then that's why you're going to see more minorities compared to whites in our system. The second viewpoint is the differential selection or selection bias argument, which says that juvenile court actors, police officers, judges, probation officers have these implicit biases, perceptions, and beliefs about black and Hispanic youth compared to whites. And because of these negative stereotypes and prejudices and attributions for why they may be engaging in crime compared to whites, that's why we're seeing black youth being arrested, being formally charged, being adjudicated. This argument says based on these selective biases is why we see these racial and ethnic disparities.
Environment
Problems with poverty, unemployment, and lack of opportunities occur across all races but tend to be more detrimental for minorities than whites. A lot of minority youth are coming from communities that have fewer alternatives to institutionalization. They don't have the resources in their communities. They may have them be placed in institutions because they don't have the social services, the educational resources, mentorship in those communities. So it's almost like, well, we're not going to put them back in their communities because they don't have the services there. They need to be in institutions due to lack of funding for mental health treatment, extracurricular activities in those areas. Judges and the juvenile justice system are less likely to release youth who have committed such offenses but don't have access to those resources. We're seeing that more kids are coming from these minority communities. It's very convoluted because, let's think about this, if they're engaging in more serious offenses because they live in impoverished communities with a lack of opportunity, they see their friends in gangs. They have the increased presence of firearms. It's easier to engage in illicit activity in those communities, then that is why they're engaging in more frequent offending. Let's look at the selection bias example. If there are the perceptions that we have certain hotspots or crime is more likely to occur, these hotspots tend to be more in the inner city in minority communities. Well, then what do we expect.
How can people help change the system?
When we can have the public realize that this is what's going on and want to invest in it, I think we will start to see the trickle-down effect of having fewer youth in our system. We're actually at our lowest juvenile crime rate in the last 40 years across the nation, but the news and social media about juveniles, engaging in these heinous behaviors, that's a tiny proportion of all of the juvenile offending, will have you believe differently. I think it's almost where we need to focus on the positives and the success stories of youth who became involved in our juvenile justice system versus some of those small, not small, in terms of impact cases with some heinous offenses. Still, the small number of youth are making the news; it's almost like they're focusing more on the negative. If the media and people were to see some of the positives of our juvenile justice system in terms of rehabilitation and focusing on the risks and needs of youth and then realize that a majority of offending will decrease as youth get older. We could get more support from the public and legislators to change the system.
About Dr. Jennifer Peck
Dr. Jennifer Peck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Peck’s research interests focus on racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system, treatment of disadvantaged groups throughout juvenile court processing, and special populations in courts and corrections. Her recent publications appear in Justice Quarterly, Law and Human Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, and Race and Justice: An International Journal. Dr. Peck is passionate about advocating for youth in the justice system by regularly revealing how young people are treated like adults instead of children going through the challenges of adolescence. To find out more about Dr. Jennifer Peck go to: University of Central Florida and on Twitter: @jenpeck_
About the Author
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