Next steps for juvenile justice reform

While incarceration is the most expensive and harmful part of the juvenile justice system, most youths are not locked up after being arrested. They are placed on probation. There are now more than 39,000 on probation statewide.

Probation can be a source of support and positive engagement, but too often it is the cause of young people getting locked up. Many youths are locked up over violations of probation for small infractions and can be further affected by individual decisions made by probation officers who don’t necessarily have the best interest of youths in mind.

“Probation is a hidden secret of the juvenile justice system,” said Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “The proportion of kids put in probation remains the same year after year. It is quite similar to what it looked like with the overall approach in the 1990s. One thing to change is dramatically narrowing who ends up on probation.”

Balis says the research points to a focus on incentives — rather than sanctions — with individual plans for probation having a more positive effect. Probation remains the main response for youth who have a run-in with the law. In a 2017 study, 8 of 10 youths arrested were referred to county juvenile probation departments.

Balis notes that different factors contribute to youths of color being locked up at higher rates than their white counterparts.

“We know that policing patterns are vastly different from one jurisdiction to the next with different rates of arrest for the same crimes of

selling drugs,” Balis said. “Plus, there’s implicit bias.”

Balis stressed that just because the work is hard doesn’t mean systems should stop trying to eradicate inequality. There’s not one quick, easy fix.

For David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, the work comes down to three things: reduce, improve and reinvest.

“The systems themselves have an extraordinary ability to cause harm to young people, bounce back from reform and go back to the traditional correction-based system,” Muhammad said. “What I’ve found is reduction is the best thing — keeping people out and away from the system.” While Muhammad acknowledged progress has been made in reducing the number of young people coming into the juvenile justice system, there is still much to be desired when it comes to reinvestment in programs to steer youth in a positive direction.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted this week to close juvenile hall by the end of 2021 and instead have a task force focus on creating rehabilitative centers for juvenile offenders.

The vote came on the heels of a recent Chronicle report that found the cost of detaining youth reached more than $500,000 in some Bay Area counties while juvenile hall

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More of Spencer Whitney’s reporting and analysis of juvenile justice. populations have diminished to the point facilities are more than half empty.

“California Youth Authority had 10,000 youth and now there’s less than 700,” Muhammad said. “However, the money hasn’t been reinvested in the communities that these youth come from. We can’t be willing to pay between $200,000 to $300,000 per year per youth and be unwilling to invest that level of resource into youth, the families and the communities they live in.”

While a small fraction of youth pose a danger to society, Muhammad maintains that trained professionals should engage them positively and build on their strengths and assets.

With juvenile crime and arrests at record lows, now would be the perfect opportunity to revamp the juvenile justice system — from prevention to probation — in a way that truly benefits juveniles. The collection of scientific studies and data that point to the adverse effects of incarceration as well as the recommendations from activists and former juvenile offenders alike should serve as the framework for building an equitable system.

Spencer Whitney is assistant editor for The San Francisco Chronicle’s opinion pages. Email: swhitney@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SpenceWhitney

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