Dismantling America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline via the JJDPA

Facebook Twitter More...

 

 

 

By Ashley Moore, Policy Associate/Staff Attorney, Childrens Defense Fund (CDF)

In 2013, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) celebrated its 40th anniversary and recommitted its efforts to ensure a level playing field for all of America’s children.  For forty years, CDF has worked to give every child a healthy, head, fair, safe, and moral start in life in order to dismantle America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline and instead build a pathway to high-quality education and successful adulthood for every child.    

From their earliest years through young adulthood, children and youth—especially poor children and children of color—face multiple risks that too often cause them to be funneled into the prison pipeline and enter  the juvenile and criminal justice systems, frequently locked up behind bars.  CDF describes the cradle to prison pipeline as an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race. 

The landmark federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), enacted just a year after CDF was started, has been a valuable tool to help begin to dismantle the pipeline to prison and punishment and instead create a pathway to appropriate services and treatment to support youth, strengthen families and protect communities. 

Shortly after the JJDPA was enacted, CDF published Children in Adult Jails – a report that examined the conditions of confinement in adult jails for children across the nation.  It included five key findings:

  1. Children were found in adult jails in every state visited.
     
  2.  “[T]he overwhelming majority of children . . . in adult jails were not detained for violent crimes and could not be considered a threat to themselves or the community.”
     
  3. “[W]hile the majority of jailed children were white, a disproportionate number – 31.8 percent – were minority.  Almost four out of every five jailed children were male."
     
  4. “[T]he length of time and the reason children were in jail were often in violation of state laws.”
     
  5. “[T]he conditions of most of the jails in which we found children [were] abysmal, subjecting them to cruel and usual punishment through physical neglect and abuse.  Most of the jails [were] old and dirty, with insufficient sanitary, food or medical facilities.  . . .  With insufficient, poorly trained and poorly supervised staff, there [was] often no one suitable to deal with children or to assess their needs.”

The horror of children in adult jails has been addressed, at least in part, by safeguards in the JJDPA that have been implemented over time for children in the care of juvenile justice systems, such as requiring both sight and sound separation of youth from adults in secure facilities and the removal of youth from adult jails and lockups. 

With commitment, advocacy and great persistence from stellar advocates for youth in the system, the number of children in adult jails and prisons has also been greatly reduced, declining 54 percent since 2000 and 22 percent since 2010.  While there is much more to do to help the estimated 250,000 youth tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults each year, the Act has made a difference to thousands of children previously detained in adult jails and prisons.

Given these important gains for children at the deep end of the system, similar gains now are needed at the front end to help keep at-risk children from entering the pipeline to prison in the first place and to intervene with first-time offenders and nonserious offenders to maximize their chances of leading productive, successful lives. 

While the JJDPA recognizes these important front end goals, the resources dedicated to preventing at-risk youth from entering the system have always been scarce and have been decimated by budget cuts in the recent decade.  Increased investments in a range of programs and services to promote healthy youth development and rehabilitation, with special attention to the needs of poor children and children of color who disproportionately come to the attention of the system, are desperately needed. 

Age-appropriate, trauma-informed, holistic care will allow youth to receive the services, treatment, and education they need to learn and grow into productive, prosperous citizens.  As CDF said in its early Children in Adult Jails report, “the healthy future of children and the healthy future of communities are indivisible.” 

We must invest now in prevention to strengthen our children and our communities.   

This is part of the ACT4JJ Campaign's JJDPA Matters Blog Project, a 16-week series that launched Sept. 10, 2013. You can find the full series at the JJDPA Matters Action Center.