A new report from The Sentencing Project details how youth incarceration in the U.S. has declined an astonishing 75 percent between the years 2000 and 2022. However, racial and ethnic disparities in youth arrests, convictions and sentencing persist. The Sentencing Project’s new report, “Youth Justice by the Numbers,” finds that a steep rise in incarceration rates occurred up to 2000, followed by a steep decline.
When juveniles – those under 18 in almost all states – are accused of very serious crimes and are moved to the adult system, most youths, if they are incarcerated at all, are held in juvenile facilities. The report finds that youth of color are much more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile detention.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Joshua Rovner, director of youth justice with The Sentencing Project, and author of the report. Here he explains why 2000 was the peak of juvenile incarceration – with over 108,000 young people held — and some of the reasons behind racial disparities in youth imprisonment.
JOSH ROVNER: I do think that we saw increases in youth offending on serious and less serious charges, but also changes in policies that encouraged the arrests of young people. So there’s nothing more discretionary than arresting a young person for a curfew or loitering violation. Like, what’s more typical than for a teenager than staying out late. And you see that same pattern for youth arrests for curfew and loitering violations that you see for overall arrests, which I think points to the discretion that is a big part of the system.
Now when it comes to the more violent offenses, we certainly have mercifully seen a drop in violent offending, but I think that there’s any number of ways that our teenagers are doing better than they were when I was in high school. I graduated in 1993.
MELINDA TUHUS: Josh Rovner, what could happen as a result of someone being arrested and moving through the juvenile justice system?
JOSH ROVNER: A child who is convicted in the juvenile system — the technical term is adjudicated delinquent. They can have a number of punishments along the way. They could certainly be let off with a warning. They could receive community service or request for restitution. They also can receive probation or they could be locked up in youth prisons. That phrase is commitment. We see about eight percent of cases that go to the courts ending in commitment.
Now, every step along the way that I just talked about, the racial disparities grow. We see more leniency for white youth and for youth of color, which is why you get from a place where black youth are 2.3 times as likely to be arrested, but are then 4.5 times as likely to be incarcerated in the juvenile system.
MELINDA TUHUS: What are some of the options instead of arresting a young person, what could happen instead?
JOSH ROVNER: Well, there’s any number of opportunities for what can be called pre-arrest diversion, meaning responding to the behaviors even if they’re technically violations of the law by not arresting a kid. You do not need to call the police every time that kids get into trouble. And if police get there, that doesn’t mean that they have to arrest someone. So you can easily imagine a pretty rough shoving match in a high school hallway. It certainly happened in my high school when I was there. And if it did, there was a social studies teacher who just, you know, grab the kid by the backpack and said, “Go to class.” And if it was repeatedly a problem, then a vice principal or even a principal would get involved. But the idea that you would call police for that sort of ordinary adolescent misbehavior, that’s not required.
But there’s the expression that when you’re holding a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. And so for police officers hanging out in schools, which are generally pretty safe places, when they see things that are arrestable behaviors, because that behavior, that’s a simple assault, like you’re not allowed to put your hands on someone, you’re not allowed to shove them.
So do the police choose to make an arrest or do they choose to de-escalate and say, “What’s going on here? Let’s have a conversation. Let’s get the school counselor involved before this escalates into something worse.”
So first, using some common sense and some discretion of whether this needs to be arrested at all. We see this when it comes to drug use for people of different backgrounds. It’s very easy for some people’s drug use to be seen as a medical problem, something to be treated, an addiction. And for others it’s seen as a criminal behavior. And I think that the more that we can see all of our kids as kids and treat them with compassion when they are addicted to drugs or using drugs and on a pathway to addiction, that is another alternative.
There are good programs that do not require court involvement that you can refer people to.
But I think the thing that I’m most hopeful for when there is actual harm and an actual victim — are restorative justice programs. This involves the victim and the offender, a caring adult for both children involved. Usually a parent, but doesn’t have to be a parent and a restorative justice coordinator who manages the conversation that takes place because usually these things don’t come outta nowhere, right?
Like someone harms someone else because perhaps they were being bullied relentlessly. To break that cycle through a restorative justice conversation has shown much better results. Not only in that it stops the offending to a much greater extent than court involvement does, but also gives the victim much better satisfaction of feeling like they’ve been heard and understood.
Where the court processes, you know, for one thing, you have a lawyer speaking on your behalf, you’re not speaking on your own. But also correctly, juvenile courts have confidentiality. So we don’t know what comes of it when a young person gets referred to court, did they get a serious response? Did they get probation? Did they get community service? No one knows. Nor should they know what happens in a juvenile court.
Restorative justice circle does a much better job closing that loop so that the victim knows that they have been heard, which I think is what most of us really want.
For more information, visit the Sentencing Project website at sentencingproject.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
