Recently my friend showed me an interesting proposal advocating for blended sentencing, which is thought to be a more effective method for rehabilitating juvenile offenders. Blended sentencing allows juvenile offenders to be subject to juvenile or adult sanctions, depending on the severity of the crime and the offender's maturity. In some cases, the offender is levied adult and juvenile sentences simultaneously, but can have the adult sentence revoked through good behavior. In other cases, the juvenile sentence is served until the offender reaches a certain age, when he or she is transfered to an adult facility and begins serving the adult sentence.
The idea behind this is to give juvenile offenders a chance to reduce their punishment. They are evaluated before receiving an adult sentence, which could be much harsher than a juvenile one, and given opportunities to appeal. This method has been found to reduce recidivism (relapse into criminal behavior) in youth, since it re-evaluates the offender before condemning him or her to a potentially life-long sentence.
Only about half of the states use blended sentencing, but I think it should be adopted nationwide. Juvenile offenders should be given a chance to show their growth and maturity, and letting them know that their future doesn't have to be prison can be a great motivator for them to change their behavior.
What do you all think about blended sentencing, or dealing with juvenile offenders in general?
I think one of the biggest issues with the juvenile detention system isn't blended sentencing so much as it is solitary confinement, the effects of which are very different on children than they are on adults. Last year, I argued for prohibiting juvenile solitary confinement:
ReplyDeleteThe practice of solitary confinement, or keeping prisoners completely isolated and deprived of any form of human contact, is often employed when a prisoner is seen as a danger to themselves or others in the prison. However, it has since evolved into an expensive, overused, and counterproductive practice. This is true even more so when children under the age of 18 are kept in solitary confinement, a practice all too common in the United States. Several years ago, a UN Special Rapporteur on Torture declared keeping minors in solitary confinement “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. Many have argued that it violates the 8th Amendment of our Constitution.
Isolated prisoners are kept in small cells, often only 80 square feet, without windows, and with minimal access outside or acceptable treatment programs. These extreme conditions have been shown to lead to the development of mental illness. Over half of all suicides in prisons happen in solitary confinement. In fact, solitary confinement has been proven to be as clinically depressing as physical torture. Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis.
And yet, we still hold countless minors in these inhumane conditions. Because prisons do not have to disclose the extent to which they keep minors in solitary confinement, the exact numbers are unclear. However, in 2012, there were 36,000 cases of minors being kept in solitary confinement in Texas alone. Furthermore, this widespread use of solitary confinement doesn't just happen to those who have been convicted. For example, Rikers Island in New York is a city jail, meaning that around 85% of all inmates are merely waiting for the resolution of their cases, yet at any given time 100 of the 400-800 teenagers at the jail are being held in solitary confinement. Trey Bundy writes of how, “Over the past 60 years, the population of public psychiatric facilities has dropped about 90 percent, while the percentage of mentally ill inmates in juvenile halls, jails and prisons has skyrocketed.” No longer can we use solitary confinement as a convenient way of 'disposing' of mentally ill inmates instead of getting them the proper care they need.
Furthermore, solitary confinement is far more expensive than general prison conditions. In California, it costs 574% more to house someone in a Solitary Housing Unit versus the general population. In Illinois, the price of solitary is two to three times more than a regular inmate in a maximum security prison. In Colorado, it can cost as much as $21,485 more annually to isolate someone.
The cost of keeping minors in solitary confinement, both emotionally and fiscally, does not justify its use.