A few years ago, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Ciavarella began his prison sentence for taking commissions for each child he sent into Juvenile Detention Centers.
In 2001, Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its African American men (no duplicates) under the direction of Police Commissioner Rich Stanek (Google Rich Stanek Resigns Star Tribune).
As a Hennepin County guardian ad-Litem, I’ve become sensitive to MN Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz statements that 90% of youth in the Juvenile Justice System have come through Child Protection Services & that the “difference between that poor child & a felon, is about eight years”.
25% of our youth are charged in adult courts (200,000). I’ve written about eleven & twelve year olds charged as adults. Abused kids that never had a chance. Over 60% of the youth in juvenile justice suffer from mental health issues (fully half of that population suffer from multiple, chronic, and severe diagnosis).
The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence & deprivation”. I witnessed this torture each time I took a new child protection case (read this blog or my book for their stories)
Michigan & Pennsylvania each have almost 400 young people sentenced to life without parole. It was only 5 years ago that America stopped executing juveniles (and those who committed their crimes as juveniles).
Kids condemned to the adult criminal justice system are exponentially more likely to be raped & beat up. They are also almost all children of color and poor and never have the opportunity of leading a normal life.
There is not much in the criminal justice system to protect them. Just like there is very little in America’s child protection system to protect children from the torture that is their home-life.
From a strictly economic perspective, this system is extremely expensive. For 30 years we have maintained a recidivism rate of 66% and today cost average about $50,000 per year per inmate (juvenile justice costs in New York and California have hit $250,000 per year per juvenile).
Calculating costs of just 30 years of institutionalization at $50,000/year is 1.5 million dollars per caged youth (way more than any successful youth treatment program at this time) plus the added costs of crime (1.6 trillion dollars per year per insurance industry estimates) & the less easy to value of safe neighborhoods.
German police fired less than one thousand shots in their entire nation last year.
America has for years maintained the highest homicide rate of all industrialized nations. In some U.S. neighborhoods, 800 shots are fired on a single evening.
The United States now has 5% of the world’s population & 25% of the world’s prison population (2.5 million) not including parolees, juvenile justice kids, or children in child protection services (another 2 million). Over 30% of American youth are arrested before their 23rd birthday.
I could draw your attention to the huge disparity of race in our prison population & war on drugs, or the unfairness of the King Pin laws, or that Minnesota used to have a prison with a very low rate of recidivism (29% at the Shakopee Valley Women’s Prison – but when the successful programs inside the prison were cancelled, the recidivism rate jumped to 66%) or that our small state has half a billion dollar prison budget for under 3000 inmates.
Who’s winning this battle?
Not children, not cities, not schools, healthcare, or parents – You Raise’em, We Cage’em, the American way
(speak up, it is time).
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Continue reading ‘The Perfect System; You Raise’em We Cage’em, Everybody Wins (Child Un-Protection)’
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