Terry Brooks: Reform KY.'s Juvenile Justice System.

Time to reform Ky.'s juvenile justice system
By Terry Brooks

At issue | June 13 Herald-Leader article by Brandon Ortiz, "Perils seen for juvenile justice; lack of attorneys is just one worry"

Every day in Kentucky juvenile courts, young people are placed in custody for disobeying their parents, cutting school or even bringing home bad grades.

Youths of color are routinely incarcerated at far higher rates for committing the same offenses as white children.

And each day, children who were previously taken into custody for minor infractions return after committing far more serious crimes.

This is the reality of the juvenile justice system in Kentucky today – a system in dire need of reform for young people of color and minor offenders.

The dysfunctional state of juvenile justice in Kentucky mirrors a larger national problem. The 2008 national Kids Count Data Book calls for urgent and massive change in juvenile justice policy, which it says has been shaped for too long by ”misinformation, hyperbole, and political prejudices.“

The report offers a roadmap for reform, including keeping low-level youthful offenders out of court, reducing the reliance on secure confinement for young people and taking strong actions to decrease the disparate treatment of youths of color in the juvenile justice system.

For Kentucky, such changes could not come soon enough. In several areas, our state's juvenile justice record is far worse than the rest of the nation's.

Kentucky has the second highest rate in the country for detaining youths charged with ”status“ offenses, infractions that would not be crimes if they were committed by an adult.

Kentucky also doles out punishment along racial lines at higher rates than the already troubling national average. Two youths who enter the system with the same charge and same history are often shuttled along different paths, with youths of color receiving worse outcomes. In 2006, for every four youths of color placed in custody in Kentucky, just one white youth was detained, compared with a national rate of three to one.

Several factors are to blame for these trends, most notably a lack of practical options for treating children whose behavior lands them in court. The result is an overreliance by judges on court orders and detention. This problem was exacerbated during the Fletcher administration, when the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice took a sharp turn away from treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders.

There is virtually no evidence that the harsher approaches reduce crime. Studies routinely show that 50 to 80 percent of youths released from juvenile correctional facilities are rearrested within two to three years — even those who were not serious offenders before confinement. Moreover, locking up kids is expensive, costing taxpayers typically about $200 to $300 per youth per day.

To address these problems, Kentucky Youth Advocates is setting up a commission made up of prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement officials, educators, child advocates and juvenile justice experts. The commission will consider recommending a variety of reform measures, including developing a database that would track kids as they move through the system and exploring options for creating more home- and community-based treatment alternatives to court-ordered detention.

In the last year, several factors that tend to trigger higher youth offenses increased. These include a 5 percent increase in children living in poverty and a 9 percent rise in children living in families where no parent works full-time year-round, according to Kids Count.

The time to act is clearly now. Kentucky can no longer afford to operate a juvenile justice system that fails to reduce crime and treats youth of color differently than other young people.

Terry Brooks is executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates.