Why Incarceration Isn't the Solution to Youth Crime

And Fear Doesn't Lead to Good Decision-Making

This post will mainly focus on the situation in Maryland as it is the area I feel most informed about. I mentioned my work with the Maryland Youth Justice Coalition (MYJC) in my previous post highlighting the example of Hawaii and their concerted (and successful!) effort to reduce youth incarceration. Crime is a complicated subject to talk about because as a society we are constantly reconsidering what we consider to be a crime (think about prohibition of alcohol, legalization of marijuana, etc.), and crime statistics provide a useful but incredibly incomplete picture of the real number of crimes committed. For example, in The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander highlights several studies which have shown that white people use illegal drugs are higher rates than black people, but are much less likely to be arrested for it. Of course, the only way to have a completely accurate record of crimes committed across the US would be to surveil everyone at all times, which is very undesirable. The point I’m making is that it is important to read crime statistics with a critical and discerning eye because they are dependent on a variety of factors which can obscure when there is actual harm to society under simple numbers that go up or down. Maryland has a chance to continue in the direction of Hawaii, with concerted efforts to improve youth outcomes, but we are at a crossroads with many people pushing to roll back reforms which support youth.

So let’s take a look at youth crime in Maryland. The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) recently released a research brief entitled Putting Youth Crime in Maryland in Context. Across the state, but especially in Baltimore, local news stations have been regularly reporting on youth crime. According to MYJC’s tracking, over a roughly 4 month period this year, Fox in Baltimore reported on youth crime more than once a day, compared to the second highest which was a local Baltimore station reporting about once every four days. In my last post I mentioned Alec Karakatsanis’ writing about how news can create false perceptions of crime without ever technically lying, which is exactly what Fox is doing. By choosing to run stories every single day about youth crime, they are creating an impression that there is a “crime wave”. And now some state leaders have been calling for rollbacks of moderate reforms to the youth justice system and citing the public perception of rising youth crime as their reasoning. One such reform is the Child Interrogation Protection Act, which basically extends basic human rights to youth to help protect them from unsupervised interrogation (without a lawyer or a parent) in which they may give a false confession. Rolling back these reforms would lead to fewer protections of young people’s rights in the criminal justice system, and higher levels of incarceration (and racially disparate incarceration).

The public perception isn’t completely off, but a closer look at the data reveals that many of the broader trends are positive, and we should be careful in pushing for more punitive policies and more policing/incarceration of youth. Some highlights from the September 2023 DJS report linked above:

Juvenile crime represents a relatively small portion of all crime in Maryland. In 2021, adults represented 93% of homicide arrests. There is a noted increase in youth crime over the past two years; but today, most categories of youth crime - including violent youth crime - are below pre-pandemic levels and have been declining for more than a decade.

The narrow focus of local media outlets on the recent increase in youth crime ignores the context of all-time low crime rates during the pandemic and the broader view that youth crime is still lower than it was pre-pandemic.

Incarceration - while one important tool for accountability - is not the only or the most effective course in addressing juvenile crime. Recent declines in juvenile crime have occurred at a time when leaders in the justice system have made the choice to prioritize community-based rehabilitation over incarceration.

The power of community-based rehabilitation was the point of my last post on Hawaii’s approach to youth crime, and I hope to show in the next few posts that it has proven effective in several states in the US. This point was repeated recently by the Montgomery County Chief of Police who said “We have been accused of simply wanting to arrest juveniles as a way of solving the problems of our society. We know that doesn’t work. It’s never worked. But what has worked is intervention and diversion.”

The number of youth who are victims of violent crimes has increased significantly, with non-fatal shooting victimization of young people quadrupling statewide over the past decade.

Taken together with the rest of the report, it seems that there is a gun problem which I believe is both the cause and effect of a broader culture of fear. This Gothamist article describes a study which explored the reasons teens in Brooklyn are carrying guns. Implicit in this is the problem of easy access to guns in the US which should also be changed, but will have to be the topic of a future post. The study reveals our failure as adults to provide a safe environment for children and several of the quotes from the surveyed youth are telling:

“I’d rather go to jail by 12 than die and get carried by six people.”

“To be honest, I never liked guns but I always have it on me … I had to protect myself like I always had to be there.”

The main reason youth surveyed reported carrying guns was for protection. The smallest percentage of those surveyed were people who actually wanted to go out and kill others. And three quarters of those surveyed said they carry a gun because they fear dying. Almost as many said they fear someone hurting their family.

Interventions which incarcerate youth, but don’t focus on their economic situations and the fear they face every day of violence will never improve the situation. The fear youth feel that causes them to carry guns leads to adult fears of encountering youth with guns. When adults legislate based on fear, we often pass laws which alleviate perceived fear without actually reducing the overall danger for anyone. One such intervention that has recently been used in D.C., Baltimore, and Prince George’s County is to set youth curfews. The Marshall Project reported this summer on why these tactics are not “just ineffective, but are potentially harmful for young people.” As they greatly increase the interactions that young people (who are doing no wrong), especially minority youth, have with police.

David Wilson, a criminology professor at George Mason University, said the academic community has reached consensus that curfews aren’t effective at reducing crime.

“The common problem with crime policy is that both politicians and among the public — if their common sense notions are at odds with the research — they just disregard the research as a general rule, and I don’t know why,” he said.

These curfews can lead to fines that youth and their families are unable to pay, jail time, and criminal records, just for being in public at the wrong time. Even Texas has banned youth curfews and “at least one police department in the state had stopped using curfews, citing their ineffectiveness.”

There are many people in the US who live every day in fear. In a certain sense, this is justifiable. I know near to my neighborhood people have been robbed at gunpoint a few times over the last few weeks. However, fear does not often lead to appropriate responses. A fearful response is to, as individuals, buy a gun to protect yourself - leading to more guns in circulation, more unintended harm, and more guns in the hands of people intending to do harm. A fearful response is to, as a community, push for more policing, rolling back individuals rights, and increasing incarceration. Even if youth crime were drastically increasing (which I’ve shown isn’t the case in Maryland), incarceration is not rehabilitative, leads to worse outcomes, and can even make people more likely to commit crimes once they are released. The response that does not tackle the fear and violence the most marginalized members of our community are facing, and instead puts more people with guns on the street to strike more fear into them can only increase the cycle of violence in our communities.

The courageous response is to recognize that there is crime, that there is violence, and to invest more in our young people. To love our community more because when there is violence and pain, that is a clear sign that we need more love. To invest more in stronger community supports, diversionary efforts, mediation between victims and perpetrators of harm, connecting homeless people and people at-risk of homelessness with stable housing as soon as possible (yay housing first!). The courageous response is to recognize that each individual has autonomy and that as long as we respect other people’s autonomy, there is always a risk that we will face violence. The only way to live without fear is to trust our neighbors, to treat them as equals, to get to know them, and to support them as we would wish to be supported in our times of need. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”