The Cost of Jailing Juveniles—Enough to Give You Sticker Shock 

The Justice Policy Institute recently issued a report spelling out the staggering costs of incarcerating juveniles. The institute, a nonprofit think tank dedicated to finding ways to improve the justice system and reduce the number of people imprisoned, gathered information from 46 states on what they spend on their juvenile correctional facilities. These states accounted for 93 percent of the U.S. population in 2013.

Pew Poll Finds Voters  Support Juvenile Sentencing Reform For Those Who Commit Lesser Crimes

In the 1990s, the country and its lawmakers took a “get tough on juvenile offenders” stance. Keeping the community safe by getting delinquents off the street and locking them up was the attitude. 

Judging by a 2014 Pew Charitable Trusts poll, the times, have changed.

In this era of extreme political contentiousness in the United States, it seems as if the conservatives are the conservatives, the liberals, the liberals and never the twain shall meet.

Except . . . there is one issue on which the two adversaries—or at least some of them—can agree. Criminal-justice reform.

There is no debate that juvenile crime is of great concern in the United States. According to the FBI, youths younger than 18 commit almost 20 percent of all serious crimes, 13 percent of violent offenses, and 20 percent of crimes involving property. It’s also been found that a single lifetime of crime amounts to a $1.3 to $1.5 million burden on society. Knowing that makes it even more imperative to keep adolescents from becoming habitual criminals.

Where there is debate is how to deal with this problem and where to allocate funds earmarked for it. There are many who lean toward paying as little as possible upfront. Policymakers and those who sign the checks are under pressure to come up with programs that reduce crime without draining the budget. Often, they choose individual therapy instead of a program like Multisystemic Therapy (MST). What they overlook is the long-term savings when a treatment such as MST is implemented. It has been shown that youths commit fewer crimes following MST. That means lower future expenses for taxpayers and crime victims relative to the expenses associated with individual therapy.

Kids get into trouble. Some kids get into a lot of major trouble. They know right from wrong, but commit crimes anyway. So what to do with them? We want to be fair to these children by giving them the best shot at succeeding. Their success is ours, too. Stopping their crime will make all of us safer.

But as it is, our juvenile-justice system operates like a bike that can’t get out of first gear. That gear being incarceration. But is that right answer?

You may be wondering just how bad the situation is. So a few kids get sent away, big deal. But take a step back. Without question, incarcerating youth costs too much and makes them more likely to commit future crimes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to switch gears. 

Provide drug treatment, mental-health services, job training. And very importantly, give parents and caregivers the tools to change their children’s behavior. 

Take a look at this infographic that shows the costs of youth incarceration. Sometimes seeing makes it easier to believe. Going state by state, it’s pretty staggering how many juveniles end up in facilities and the price tag associated with putting them there.

The numbers are frightening. Right now, 2.3 million Americans are behind bars. That’s 1 in 137 people, and the majority are African-American and Latino. 

It’s mind-boggling that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country on earth. Is the country overrun with evildoers, or are we are doing something different than, say, Canada, which only has 40,500 people behind bars. Even Iran, considered an oppressive nation, has a prison population of 218,000.

The consensus at yesterday’s American Justice Summit at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City was we are doing something exceedingly counterproductive—and it’s not sustainable.

As John Wetzel, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said about incarceration and its aftermath, “Higher-risk offenders leave lower-risk. Lower-risk offenders leave higher-risk.”  And what does that mean? Simply that we may be locking up too many non-violent wrongdoers and turning them into hardened criminals behind prison walls.

Crystal had reached the “What more can I do?” stage. Her 17-year-old daughter, Danielle, had been getting in trouble for years. It reached crisis overload when the girl disappeared over a Memorial Day weekend. Crystal was sure she had run away but hesitated involving the police.

As time passed, the mother felt she had no choice and had a PINS (People In Need of Supervision) warrant issued on her daughter. This meant that if found, Danielle would be returned to New York City, where they lived, and brought before a judge. 

Getting a warrant wasn’t a decision Crystal took lightly. She knew she ran the risk of losing her child to the juvenile justice system. Danielle was found safe in Washington, D.C. And then things changed dramatically for mother and daughter. The New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) had a mandate to keep kids out of the system and with their families whenever possible.

So instead of Danielle being carted away, the court recommended Multisystemic Therapy (MST) as her treatment plan. Crystal was “skeptical,” as she later put it. After all, she and Danielle had been seeing individual therapists for two years at the great out-of-pocket expense with little evidence her daughter was improving. MST was different, Crystal was told. A therapist would be assigned to the case, she would work with them in their home—and it wouldn’t cost the family anything.

Mental Health Services Conference awards MST a Gold Achievement 

Police in Western Australia described 2013’s 53-percent drop in serious juvenile crime as “extraordinary.” One explanation given for the decline is the expanded use of behavior-management programs. One hundred and sixty of the 297 offenders being handled by youth crime intervention officers were assigned to a program. These 160 youths accounted for 1,098 offenses costing taxpayers $2.5 million. Since being placed in interventions, the number of crimes committed by them dropped to 471.

"Besides the cost-benefit, addressing the underlying issues of these young people has now been shown to reduce reoffending,” said Western Australia acting police inspector Mark Fleskens said.

Adolescents are easily influenced. No surprise there. Sometimes that means regrettable decisions like nose piercing and getting a tattoo. But when your brother or sister gets in trouble with the law, has friends who are violent and incorrigible, the influences are more serious, possibly leading to juvenile detention and prison. 

What do you do when your 16-year-old is disrespectful, aggressive, drinks, disregards curfews, and hangs around with peers who are bad influences? In other words, his life is in a downward spiral toward prison.  (The first names were changed to protect the family's privacy.)

Pablo’s mother, Maria, didn’t have the answer. The Hispanic family living in rural South Carolina had always been close-knit. But since her husband left and her fiancé moved in, Pablo’s behavior had deteriorated.

After a particularly volatile incident, the boy had to be removed from the home.