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The Number of Youth in Juvenile Detention in California Has Quietly Plummeted
- rossdavidh 8y agoThe one thing I didn't see mentioned in any of this is, are we certain that we're not just sending underaged kids to regular prison? I would like to think not, but if we're charging them as adults... But hopefully that's not something we do. Right?
- supernovae 8y agoI'm willing to bet decriminalization of weed is a huge factor of keeping kids out of prison. Just hope we continue to learn how to build a system that restores dignity, treats the causes of criminal activity and focuses on keeping people out of the system. Hard to do when many prisons are moving to for-profit private facilities.
- beat 8y agoThe numbers were dropping long before the current wave of marijuana decriminalization.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoDecriminalization of property crime probably helps too.
- Janeman544 8y agoMarijuana and Tobacco are not cool anymore for kids. Part of the reason why Vaping became a fad is because the youngsters did not bother with all kinds of smoking. The numbers show that teenage drinking and smoking has been going down year on year since the 90s. Vaping changed at but I think that trend is a short lived too.
- njharman 8y agoIt's not just or even mostly the direct "kid smoked weed went to jail". It's growing up in a culture of drug war were the police are the enemy cause they round up, hassle, and jail your older brothers, parents, everyone you know for doing things you know are not criminal. The pushers, gangs, lookouts, mules, etc. Surround kids with crimes and criminals, they will pick up the lifestyle. Pot is not a gateway drug. But pot illegalization was a gateway into crime.
- njharman 8y agoAlso decriminalization of being born to an immigrant.
- artursapek 8y agoWow, since when was that illegal? That's like the entire country at this point.
- beat 8y agoSteven Pinker talks about the root causes for this in Better Angels of Our Nature. He argues that crime has been trending steadily downward for centuries. There was a blip of increasing crime, at odds with the trends, that lasted from about the early 1960s to the late 1980s, and he offers some explanations for that blip. But in general, crime should continue to fall. The US homocide rate has been dropping steadily since 1991, from 9.8 to about 4.5 today. (The post-WWII peak was 10.2 in 1980.) It stands to reason that a drop in juvenile crime would track the drop in adult violent crime.
- TomK32 8y agoI though lead paint and lead in gasoline was a good candidate for the blip?
- beat 8y agoPinker attributes it to cultural shifts, not causes like lead paint. I googled and found his discussion of the subject. It's worth reading. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--decivilization-in-the-1960s?rgn=main;view=fulltext https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--deci...
- frankosaurus 8y agoInteresting read. In Enlightenment Now, Pinker attributes the spike in opioid overdoses and suicides to "the druggy Baby Boomer cohort reaching middle age". (Similarly, the same cohort reached prime crime-committing age during the 1960s-80s spike in violence.)
- rossdavidh 8y agoI really liked Pinker's book, but that was imho one of the weaker sections. For one thing, it more or less says that violence dropped because of "cultural shifts", which is more or less a description of what happened, not an explanation.
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- debacle 8y ago"Tough on Crime" is no longer en vogue in most parts of the US. That likely has a huge impact.
- icantdrive55 8y agoAlong with more cameras. Along with DNA analysis. The poor, and disenfranchised can't commit crimes. It's a negative sum game. Only the very stupid, or very despirate can take the risk. Now--the wealthy can run their white collar crimes without too much risk. It's not just white collar crime either. They can afford to drive drunk, speed, and pretty much do whatever their id spits out? They cannot pay taxes, and use that professional degree to fleece the poor, and uninformed? Hell--they can pretty much do whatever they want? They own the regulators that control the system. (I'm just pointing out that cameras, and science might have played a big part in the reduction if crime. Only the wealthy, can still play fast, and loose. And yes--I'm hard on all crime. It's too bad we can't tie fees/fines to income? We just might have a further drop in crime?)
- 40acres 8y ago"Tough on crime" was always a dog whistle to signal to (most) voters that politicians were willing to lock up minorities for comparably minor crimes. It's good to see that the winds have shifted towards a more just system although there is a long way to go. I think there are many factors that contribute to this trend and would love to see a paper which goes into the details. I would bet that prosecutors have a lot to do with this. Prosecutors have so much power in our criminal justice system due to what charges they choose to bring forward.
- yardie 8y agoTough on crime has gone out of style. We had our primaries recently and only a few conservative dinosaurs even mentioned ToC in their voter biography. Most of the candidates running for AD, circuit judge, and other legal offices were drumming up their crime intervention bonafides.
- rectang 8y agoVoter suppression through felony disenfranchisement, however, remains en vogue. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/florida-felons-want-their-voting-rights-restored/570103/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/florida... "In Florida, more than 21 percent of black adults are disenfranchised because of this policy."
- bilbo0s 8y agoCertain states are likely to remain relatively worse places for minorities, particularly blacks, to live. But the system is bent in this manner everywhere, including California. The diffference, of course, is that in Florida the voting populace has collectively decided that they like the way things currently work. Whereas in places like California, the voting populace is deciding for a lot of reasons that they don't like the current situation.
- beat 8y agoEven the most backwards parts of the Deep South are just trailing, but they're on the same path. They'll catch up eventually. There was a time when lynch mobs were normal in the South.
- squirrelicus 8y agoAnyone have any evidence that suggests this is because there are fewer juveniles that should be in prison, or if we're imprisoning more accurately, or there are more juvneiles that aren't in prison but should be? There's a lot of nuance here and I haven't found any good data on what caused the change -- just political bloviation
- shawn 8y agoAnother possibility is that lead has been removed from the ecosystem, leading to less violence. It's probably worth being skeptical of that hypothesis, since it seems too perfect, but it does exist.
- lostlogin 8y agoAnd it’s a good read too. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
- mholmes680 8y agoits interesting that most other comments in here are debating sociological issues rather than the medical one here, as the paper you linked pointed out. Thanks for sharing.
- 40acres 8y agoIf you look at the data, in general America's youth has been "doing better" compared to the 80s and 90s. High school graduation rates are up [0], juvenile crime is down [1], teenage pregnancy is down [2], tobacco use was down for a long time but is seeing an uptick due to e-cigs [3]. Generally the youth population is doing better and I think that all reflects in the detention rate. 0: https://www.usnews.com/high-schools/best-high-schools/articles/2018-05-18/see-high-school-graduation-rates-by-state https://www.usnews.com/high-schools/best-high-schools/articl... 1: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05200 https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05... 2: https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproductive-health-and-teen-pregnancy/teen-pregnancy-and-childbearing/trends/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproduct... 3: https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance-use/drugs/tobacco/trends/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/substance...
- komali2 8y ago>No one painted this portrait so well as John Dilulio, the criminologist who popularized the term. A self-styled tough researcher, he surveyed juvenile prisons, where he saw “vacant stares and smiles” and “remorseless eyes” staring back at him. These kids “pack guns instead of lunches,” he wrote. They roam the streets in “‘wolf packs,’” and “‘maim and kill on impulse.’” Sure sounds like sound science /s. I wish more politicians/the general public weren't so vulnerable to Appeal to Emotion fallacy. A guy wandering through a juvenile prison and being spooked shouldn't count for jack shit in policymaking.
- snambi 8y agoHahahaha... well said.
- king_panic 8y agoVICE's "Raised in the System" feature on juvenile prisioners shows how detrimental sending kids away to juvenile detention centers is. They are 30 times more likely to be sent to prisons as adults, completely unequipped to integrate back into society when they return from detention and the crimes they're sent away for can mostly be explained by adolescent tendencies that most people grow out of.
- lifeformed 8y agoPutting a kid in there almost feels like a purposeful reinforcement of the same behavior. It feels like society is saying, "Oh, you're looking for a career in crime? Let's put you in crime college for a few years so that you'll be better prepared for your new life of crime when you get out."
- ryandrake 8y agoAlso, our society is set up so that once you are labeled a criminal, that label sticks with you for the rest of your life. Many aspects of legitimate law-abiding life, particularly employment and housing, get harder once you’ve been convicted of something, even after you’ve served your time. Every application that asks for your criminal history or “have you ever been convicted” cements this class distinction. If we want fewer repeat offenders, maybe we should stop punishing them after they fulfill their punishment.
- meesles 8y agoOn the flip-side, however, many average people don't want former criminals in their society, near their kids, etc. How do you separate the ones who actually want to get back on track and live a normal life, and the ones that plan on committing more crimes as soon as they get out? If you were to offer your home as a halfway house or something similar, would you feel safe without any sort of guarantee for your safety?
- rootusrootus 8y ago
- docker_up 8y agoIn SF I've seen first-hand groups of youths filling up their backpacks with store items and running off laughing. They don't even run more than a block before slowing down to walk because they know nothing will happen. Thousands of dollars of items are taken but because of the new law where theft under $1000 per person is considered a misdemeanor, nothing happens. I talked with the merchant and she said that the police in SF don't even respond. It's shocking to me, maybe I'm naive, how quickly the changes in law get exploited to the maximum.
- ryandrake 8y agoDo we really need to throw shoplifting kids into prison, which will only serve as a training school for worse crime? Stores have insurance for this kind of loss.
- stephengillie 8y agoSliding down the slope means replacing insurance with government, and turning this into a type of basic income. Let people take what they want from the store, and pay the store back with taxes.
- jjnoakes 8y agoWhy are the only two options "do nothing" and "throw them in prison"? Shouldn't there be a middle ground here?
- logfromblammo 8y agoReturn or replace the stolen items as restitution. Pay the value of the stolen items as punishment. And since we want poor kids to get the same lesson as rich kids, make them work the value of their punishment off with a real job, like graffiti removal or trash pickup or municipal grounds-keeping or something.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoIt costs a cool million to throw a kid in jail so the numbers add up. But dont worry when the economy goes South again the prison industry will be back with their promise to provide jobs.
- smsm42 8y agoWait, so California made if very hard to put a youngster in juvenile detention, and the number of youngsters juvenile detention plummeted. Is there some deep meaning behind this that I am missing? It's like saying "we reclassified most crimes from felony to misdemeanor and the number of felonies decreased dramatically!" Well, duh! The thing to check would be what happened to crime/reoffense rates. And then making conclusions. But that didn't happen in the article.
- beat 8y agoYes, there is a deep meaning you're missing... namely, that the drop in juvenile detention mirrors a drop in crime across all parts of society.
- smsm42 8y agoI see no such comparison in the article. It may be so, or not - I have no idea. I know general crime rates are mostly declining (though it depends on place and crime - it's not universal) but I have no idea whether the drop in juvenile detention is the same as in crime, more or less. If it's the same, does it mean the reform described in the article had absolutely no effect and the reduction in detention is caused by other trend that was outside of reformer's control? Or does it mean absence of detention actually reduced the crime, causing virtuous cycle? If it's falling faster, how much this actually reduces the crime? None of these questions - which are vital for understanding the matter - were even mentioned, let alone answered.
- njharman 8y agoI blame legalization. When you make common activities not illegal, less illegal activity happens. Shocking, but true.
- chrisbrandow 8y agoNot a single mention of the continually corroborated elemental lead hypothesis. Rick Nevin specifically calls out the juvenile crime/incarceration rate as the canary in the coal mine. Whether one agrees that it’s correct or not, it certainly deserves a mention
- fipple 8y agoThis is where Singapore style caning can be much more humane than incarceration without throwing the whole city to the dogs. A few minutes of searing agony, a few days of recovery, a lifelong lesson to never do that shit again, without putting you in crime college or preventing you from ever getting a job again.
- expathacker 8y agoCould it be that the "greatest generation" were just really bad parents? The men came back from WW2, and then again Korea, completely broken with PTSD"? The boomers didn't deal with nearly as much war as their parents. Violent crime peaked exactly 18 years after Roe vs Wade. An entire generation was allowed to wait until they were ready to be intentional parents rather than accidental.
- EngineerBetter 8y ago"sew their chaos"? I'm curious - I would've expected this to be "sow" as in "sowing seeds". Is this an American spelling?
- jacobolus 8y agoNo, that’s a mistake.