Barry Krisberg is the Director of the of Research and Policy at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. For the past thirty years he has fought for the reform of California’s state juvenile correctional facilities.
Now those facilities are preparing for closure as their responsibilities will be shifted to the county level. The three remaining state facilities in California house between 800 and 900 young people. Krisberg does not think this is wise.
Youth Radio / Youth Media International recently interviewed Krisberg about this issue and its potential repercussions (via The Huffington Post). While he has been critical of the Department of Juvenile Justice in the past he does note two distinct changes that have occurred in recent years. Changes that alter the picture drastically.
First is the fact that the population of youth offenders currently incarcerated is only a small percentage of what it has been in the past. He states that this is because many of the youth he had been advocating for have since been moved out of DJJ and into county programs, a move he cites as successful. According to him, the remaining youth are part of “a very small core of very troubled young people, and so I think that people need to pay attention to the fact that these are not the youth who have been in the system in the past.”
The second change is that over the past eight years significant improvements have been, made whereas with county facilities it would be a matter of starting from square one. This means abandoning the advances made in education and medical care, for one thing. It also means that gains made in reducing the use of force and isolation might as well not have happened.
The entire interview is recommended reading, but I particularly wanted to share Mr. Krisberg’s answer when he was asked about recidivism.
I think the question is the content of the program. Are people being treated decently and humanely? Are they given the kind of resources they need?
I’m a big fan of the Missouri Department of Juvenile Justice Model, to the extent that that we move away from treating young people as inmates and prisoners and start understanding that are going to rejoin our communities pretty quickly and be citizens, that’s the key. In terms of closer to home, the way to deal with that is to create opportunities for reentry.
To me the number one problem is that when you put someone in a high security locked facility you take away all of their decision-making. Then you turn them loose after years of not even having to do any of the basics like set an alarm clock or figure out what you’re going to eat for lunch. It’s really a shock to the psyche to be under such a controlled environment and then be thrown into the chaos of communities. Therefore I think the best programs prepare youth for going home by giving them more responsibility, more freedom, more opportunity to demonstrate that they can succeed. We haven’t done that in California. We haven’t done that around the country.
This is part of the core problem. How does a person readjust to table manners, the job search, possible homelessness, and the general social interactions of day-to-day life, after time spent incarcerated? Is it any wonder that so many of these kids find the appeal of their old gang, and the secure social structure it seems to represent, as a valid choice?
Image by Davynin on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license
