In my last two posts I wrote about Hawaii drastically reducing their youth incarceration rate by choosing rehabilitation over ineffective punishment and about the need for Maryland to continue on the positive reform path we’ve started and not be ruled by fear and our initial, punitive reactions. To hopefully make very clear that a better system of accountability is possible, I’d like to look at Connecticut, which according to reporting from Slate this summer, has “cut incarceration in half, while crime plummeted.”
Just like Hawaii, Connecticut has faced a multi-decade process to reduce both crime and incarceration. Fixing these issues requires long-term thinking, planning, a lot of hard work, and a commitment to strengthening communities, but it is possible. According to Slate:
In 1999 Connecticut had so many people in prison that it paid to send 500 of them to be incarcerated in Virginia. Nearly 25 years later, the state has not only sliced its number of imprisoned people in half, but been able to close more than 10 prisons while keeping its crime rate at its lowest level in more than 40 years.
Prior to the push for reforms, Connecticut had some of the worst laws in the country for youth, including a law which “automatically tried and punished all 16 and 17-year olds as adults,” according to a report from the Justice Policy Institute on Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut. This law wasn’t repealed until 2007, but it was part of a series of reforms that Connecticut has passed over the past two decades based on new research into youth development which highlights the long-term harm to individuals and the community caused by incarceration of children.
Another hopeful message from the Slate report is that “nationally, states have reduced the number of people held in their prisons by 25 percent” since their peak incarceration rates. Connecticut has been a leader in this area and has been closing prisons while some states are still building new ones. Soon I hope to write about activists in Massachusetts who have been fighting to prevent the creation of more prisons.
Connecticut had many prisons that were built for punishment, not for rehabilitating people and preparing them to be welcomed back to their communities. According to Slate, “nationally, and in Connecticut, about 95 percent of incarcerated people are eventually released,” making the narrow focus on punishment with no rehabilitation a pretty absurd policy choice. The policy changes in Connecticut, including “repealing the death penalty, bumping the age at which juveniles could be charged as adults from 16 to 18 for most crimes, and eliminating some sentencing guidelines that affected predominantly people of color” led to a large reduction of the number of prisoners, meaning more people able to remain with their families and receive the support they need.
I think U.S. specific examples of positive prison reform are important because my experience has been that many people discount comparisons of the U.S. to other countries by claiming we have a completely different context. However, it’s worth noting that Connecticut lawmakers were inspired by Germany:
“In fact, in 2016 Malloy, Lawlor, and a team of officials from the state visited prisons in Germany, where they were surprised to find that there were more social workers than guards. That trip led to the creation of a TRUE unit at the Cheshire Correctional Institute. The acronym stands for Truthfulness (to oneself and others), Respectfulness (toward the community), Understanding (ourselves and what brought us here), and Elevating (into success).”
There are abundant examples to follow from around the world, especially on criminal justice and incarceration policy where much of the world does better than the U.S. Returning to Connecticut, not only have they reduced their overall prison population over the last two decades, they have done a great job reforming their youth justice system and are now considered a model to follow for other states in the country. In addition to only trying actual adults as adults (passed in 2007), in 2021 they raised the minimum age a person can be arrested from 7 to 10 years old. This is still below the internationally recognized best practice of 14, but it’s a step in the right direction. Now at least first and second graders in Connecticut won’t face the trauma of being arrested and brought to prison.
Connecticut is not alone in changing how they approach youth justice. According to the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE), several other states are shifting to a rehabilitation model based on our understanding of how young brains develop. The goal is to work with youth to hold them accountable, while not allowing a mistake or malicious act committed by a young person to stay on their record and prevent them from living a full life and pursuing their dreams. According to JJIE:
“The focus on mental health “is part and parcel of the goal of what they’re trying to accomplish: trying to set kids up for success after release from the facility,” Salomon said. “A lot of states are moving toward that.”
Texas officials, for instance, are swapping out their existing juvenile detention facilities with juvenile treatment centers that accommodate a smaller tally of youth at one time, in part to keep children closer to home. California is closing almost all its state-run juvenile prisons and charging its 58 counties with rehabilitating youth. And Missouri has closed its larger youth facilities in favor of smaller treatment centers.”
To close out, I want to highlight some other juvenile justice reforms that have been successful in Connecticut. According to a 2013 report from the Justice Policy Institute,
“Until just a few years ago, Connecticut routinely sent youth to court and even detained them for minor misdeeds (truancy, running away, alcohol possession) that would not be illegal if committed by an adult – despite evidence that such harsh treatment for these “status offenses” is costly, ineffective, and harmful to youth. Since 2005, Connecticut has eliminated admission of youth to detention centers for status offenses and opened Family Support Centers (FSC) statewide that offer community-based treatment and other services for status-offending youth and their families rather than probation supervision. The state reduced judicial processing (formal petition) of status offender referrals from 50 percent of those filed in 2006-07 to just 4.5 percent in 2010 and 2011. Since 2006, the number of youth with a status offense who were rearrested or convicted of crimes fell by more than 70 percent.”
Connecticut also reduced arrests at schools for routine misbehavior, piloting programs where they limit the number of cases when youth can be arrested at school. In one such pilot, “arrests and expulsions both fell by more than 60 percent.” This is just as of 2012, but we can now see how the combination of all of these reforms led to the outcomes I mentioned above: the closing of prisons, more community services, people returning to their communities equipped with skills they need to manage their emotions and be active participants in society.
The only reason to imprison someone for something like a status offense is if you haven’t taken the time to invest in positive diversionary programs. The old adage holds true for criminal justice: “when your only tool is a prison, everyone looks like a prisoner.” When we invest in community support services, therapy, after-school activities, and broadly providing for the needs of all of our children, then we have a variety of tools that we can use to tackle the problems we face. As I wrote in my previous post, Maryland is at a turning point. We could easily fall back into the old, ineffective punitive system for dealing with youth crime. Or we could continue to increase our love and care for the children of our community, believing deep-down that only love can drive out hate and violence, and knowing from examples across the U.S. and across the world that it has proven to be true.
Criminal justice is a complex topic, which is why we need complex, community-based responses. One-size-fits-all approaches don’t end up saving money (incarceration is absurdly expensive), and they come with huge costs both to taxpayers and to people who are removed from their families and friends for years at a time and then sent back without the means to reintegrate. A better criminal justice system is possible, and it is already happening across the U.S. Lawmakers need all the support they can get from their constituents as they implement these reasonable, fact-based policies to reduce incarceration and increase support programs for community members.