The Problem of Mass Incarceration

The Present

Most recently, in 2018 the Juvenile justice reform bill called Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was reauthorized as an updated version of a 1974 law that had expired in 2007.  Since 2007, mandated oversight of the juvenile justice system has waned, and racial disparities have dramatically increased. For example, between 2003 and 2013, when 16 percent of American’s youth population was black, the number of committed juveniles increased from 38-40 percent—one number that did go up. During the same decade, white youth made up 56 percent of the population, and their number of committed youths dropped from 39 to 32 percent, further increasing the disparity between the levels of incarceration between white and black youth. The racial disparity between black and white youth in custody overall increased 22 percent since 2001. Over the same fifteen-year period, native American youth were more than three times as likely as whites to end up in a juvenile detention facility.²⁸ The JJDPA brings increased legislative oversight to states’ work towards decreasing racial inequality in juvenile justice.²⁹  It requires states receiving federal dollars to collect data on racial disparities in the juvenile system and to come up with concrete plans for addressing those inequities. These are good news, for today, only 40 percent of the country’s youth are of color, yet on probation caseloads they are over-represented at 55 percent and are less likely to be diverted to other programs than their white peers. They represent 68 percent of the youth being locked up for technical violations—for breaking rules, not laws.³⁰ The new laws also keep all youth out of adult prisons even if they’ve been charged with adult crime.  Also passed in 2018, The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act bans the shackling of pregnant girls and provides funding for tutoring, mental health, and drug and alcohol programs for kids.

Despite the documented decreases in juvenile crime and detention or prison enrollment, our justice system continues several detrimental practices that crept into the system during the high crime decades and reduced the differences in treatment between adults and juveniles. The United States still leads the industrialized world in number of youth incarcerations. In all states it is now easier to move juveniles into the adult system, and at increasingly younger ages (in some states as low as 14). Young people are incarcerated for technical violations of probation, low-level offenses like property or drug offenses or issues that are not considered adult crimes, like possession of alcohol or truancy.³¹  

The continued treatment of youth like adults, often based singularly on age, does not take into consideration their lower levels of education and life experience, their less-developed brain function, or their greater susceptibility to peer pressure and momentary emotions. Also, unlike adults, youth are likely to “age out” of their delinquency, through establishing mature relationships, getting jobs, or starting their own families.³² Further, the natural process of aging not only is interrupted by incarceration, it is reduced by pulling youth away from schools, activities, and jobs—the interactions with which usually help them through aging out.  Solutions to some of these problems are discussed below.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin along with the House and Senate agreed in 2013 that juvenile justice in Oklahoma was due for another overhaul.  According to Mason, our system had not been able to account for the “differences in culpability and the rehabilitative potential between adults and children; at the same time, costs were increasing—both financial and social. Individual plans for rehabilitation, though required, could not be sustained. The result was the risk that more children, whose offenses were often simply the result of temporary bad decisions, would become lifetime criminals because of their treatment.³³ The more intense and punitive the environment a youthful offender is placed in, the greater the chances for recidivism.³⁴  

Today, the state now runs two mechanically secured and guarded facilities in the state.  They provide treatment, health and education services—a far cry from the state of early 1960s institutions. Staff-secured programs like group homes or the Tulsa Boys Home have a seven-month maximum. These provide internal structure and extracurricular activities in addition to treatment, health and education services. We see more innovation in county courts, like Tulsa’s.  Oklahoma will have to adhere to new 2018 mandates to track and create plans to improve persistent racial disparities in our juvenile system. This is an important development: as of 2015, per 100,00 people, the custody rates for whites was 84; for blacks, 516; for Latino, 72; and for native American, 119.³⁵  

Youth fall under oversight by the state for four reasons:  youth adjudicated delinquents (ages 13-19 who have committed an offense that as adults would have been a misdemeanor or felony); Children in Need of Support, or CHINS (youth no longer under supervision of adult, such as runaways, school truants, or those whose guardians can no longer control them or provide safety for them—not adult offenses and only relevant to juveniles);  and youth In Need of Treatment (youth who pose a threat to themselves or others).  The fourth is Youthful Offenders, or youth offenders of more serious specific crimes, like murder or armed robbery, and who have separate requirements and needs of treatment. All of these are represented at my school, and my students often come to us from the institutions described above.

After a drastic increase in juvenile crime Oklahoma between the 1970s and the 1990s, movement towards the more punitive has taken place and differences in treatment of you of color persists. Today, however, we look to Tulsa County for more progressive juvenile justice practices.