Court-Involved Youth

(melanie hibbert)

In 2008, there were an estimated 2.11 million arrests made of persons under the age of 18 in the United States. Increasingly obvious in a generation of mass incarceration of youth, young people who become involved with the justice system often experience a plurality of consequences that result from their arrest and incarceration. These consequences include, but are not limited to, interrupted access to education, unemployment, economic hardship, and discrimination— which in turn, contribute to an increased likelihood of re-arrests and future entanglements with the justice system.

In addition to these personal consequences, there are increasing economic costs related to incarceration. According to a 2009 report by the PEW Center on the States, corrections costs have risen to over $50 billion annually and represent the second fastest growing state budget category behind Medicaid (2010). Describing the conditions of incarceration and confinement in a system “rife with institutional racism,” Bell urges juvenile justice professionals to oppose “legislative agendas that continue to demonizes young people of color” (2000, p.190). Rather than the continuation of get-tough-on-juvenile-crime tactics, Bell argues for interventions that support juvenile offenders with a focus on their strengths rather than their deficits. To this call for reform, alternative to detention programs (ATDP) for youth have gained increased attention and support in recent years.

Positioned as positive interventions, ATDs strive to decriminalize youth and focus on the rehabilitation rather than the punishment of youth. ATDs attempt to interrupt the cycle of incarceration by providing space for youth to reflect on their lives without relocating them away from their families and communities. For court involved youth, opportunities and programs that allow them to work towards understand self, coming to terms with past actions, and imagining possible futures outside of the justice system are critical.

I have been involved with an ATD program for the past year, an after-school program located in East Harlem with youth ages 12-16. While the success of this program is hard to gauge, I am confident that this program has much more positive effects than a juvenile detention center.

Here are two videos we created this past spring (password: Choices), one called "The Hugs Show" and the other based on Ground Zero. I hope this offers a dimension of ATD programs and what they do:

http://vimeo.com/24533534
http://vimeo.com/24128742