You might expect, given the price tag of these facilities, that Pennsylvania would reserve the use of out-of-home placements (i.e.,\u00a0juvenile\u00a0incarceration) for kids who have committed serious crimes, or for kids who have long histories of delinquency. But in fact, the opposite is true, as illustrated by some of the shocking data presented by the task force. Most kids are sent to these outrageously expensive facilities for their very first offense.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The most common first offense? Nonviolent misdemeanors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for the kids with histories of serious offenses, one\u00a0study found that incarceration is no more effective in reducing recidivism than allowing them to stay at home with their families under community supervision.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
An even more disconcerting finding by the task force is that the state routinely takes kids with serious offenses out of the\u00a0juvenile\u00a0justice\u00a0system and automatically prosecutes them as adults \u2014 without the opportunity to even be heard by a\u00a0juvenile\u00a0court judge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This practice, called \u201cdirect file,\u201d is a lingering result of a misguided law from the 1990s. Legislators of both parties codified\u00a0a morally repugnant view that a new breed of children were \u201csuperpredators\u201d who could never be rehabilitated. We know now that this is wrong, and that the legislature should end the practice. By diverting kids facing nonviolent offenses, Pennsylvania can bring the most serious cases back into its\u00a0juvenile\u00a0justice\u00a0system, without incurring additional costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
All of this is why the findings of the Pennsylvania\u00a0Juvenile\u00a0Justice\u00a0Task Force are so troubling \u2014 and its recommended solutions so promising.<\/p>\n
Some conservative leaders may be under the impression that these reforms are big-city liberal solutions that go too far, but nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that similar efforts have already been\u00a0embraced\u00a0by\u00a0conservatives\u00a0of every stripe across the country.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, in 2013,\u00a0Georgia\u00a0unanimously enacted legislation prohibiting placing kids in facilities unless they had committed a felony or had a significant history of offending. Georgia also barred incarceration for minor violations of community supervision, such as missing appointments or curfew.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet in Pennsylvania, most kids placed in facilities are there on their first offense.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2016,\u00a0Kansas\u00a0prohibited its courts from sending kids to facilities for misdemeanors and lower-severity felonies, which saved the state millions of dollars that they reinvested into evidence-based community programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet in Pennsylvania, approximately 60% of kids sent to state-run facilities are there for misdemeanors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in 2017, the\u00a0Utah\u00a0legislature required that kids coming in the front door of the\u00a0juvenile\u00a0justice\u00a0system for low-level offenses be diverted from formal court proceedings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet in Pennsylvania, two-thirds of kids who score as \u201clow risk\u201d to reoffend do not receive diversion from court and become entangled in the system.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite making these reforms, which reduced\u00a0juvenile\u00a0incarceration and cut costs, Georgia, Kansas, and Utah all saw no spikes in\u00a0juvenile-related crime, and in some data,\u00a0juvenile\u00a0crime dropped.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Removing children from their families must be a last resort, not the first step for\u00a0juvenile\u00a0authorities. Yet, that is often what happens in the commonwealth. And the cost of\u00a0juvenile\u00a0incarceration is massive, not just for the families, but for the taxpayers who have to pick up the tab. Pennsylvania can do better. And the\u00a0Juvenile\u00a0Justice\u00a0Task Force has provided the way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Safavian is general counsel for the American Conservative Union (ACU) and directs\u00a0the\u00a0ACU Foundation’s Nolan Center for\u00a0Justice.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Pennsylvania\u2019s\u00a0juvenile\u00a0justice\u00a0system takes too many kids away from their families while costing too much and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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