New era launched for juvenile justice
The Shelby County Commission launched a new era for juvenile justice in Memphis and Shelby County recently (Jan. 28) after commissioners approved $1.3 million to design a new Youth Justice & Education Center.
This new center has been long overdue. As the judge of Juvenile Court, I applaud the commissioners’ foresight, along with the support of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Sheriff Floyd Bonner, to provide troubled children in our community with a better chance for rehabilitation and the promise for a better future. Let me explain. It is not unusual for the following to happen. Law enforcement brings a 15year-old to the detention area at Juvenile Court after charging him with aggravated robbery and theft of property. This young man has been in and out of Juvenile Court since he was a toddler. He was abused at an early age and then bounced between family members and foster care during his formative years adding to his trauma. When he was in school, educators say he was academically bright. But he was suspended from school often, mostly for fighting, and he was brought to Juvenile Court when he was nine years old for assaulting a family member.
Counseling didn’t seem to help this young man. He started burglarizing houses when he was 12. At 15, he found a gun and robbed an elderly lady of her purse and her car. The police tracked him down and now he sits in detention at Juvenile Court awaiting trial.
The Juvenile Court detention facility where this young man likely will be held for at least 30 days is not a good place for this young man or any other teenager, regardless of the charges for detention, and our county commissioners recognized that. The detention area that was built more than a half-century ago is a cold and uninviting place that can send a troubled and angry teen into further despair.
The architectural firm that conducted an assessment of the Juvenile Court facility at 606 Adams said 42 times in its report that our current detention center has outlived its usefulness.
We know that young people, particularly teenagers, can be prone to bad decisions, especially when life has been full of difficulties for them. We also know that there is a direct correlation between poverty and crime. About 39 percent of children living in Memphis live in poverty in households that make less than $25,100. In cities with a population greater than 500,000, Memphis ranks second in child poverty.
And when those bad decisions are egregious - when a gun is involved or there is bodily harm to another person -
they are subject to arrest and the juvenile justice laws of Tennessee.
Mental health experts tell us that exacerbating a child’s situation is the condition of his or her surroundings. That includes the physical place in which a child lives. Juvenile Court at 606 Adams is antiquated. There are no windows so that children in detention can see outside. There is a small and inadequate exercise area, and if the weather is bad, it’s unusable.
The heating and air systems often need repair. If the air conditioning goes off in the the summer, conditions can be miserable.
The list of problems is long. But the worst problem is that the space is small and cramped. When there are more than 75 juveniles in detention – and that happens often.
Hope Academy, the county school operating inside Juvenile Court, can’t accommodate all of them. In this case, each child can only attend school two hours each day even though Tennessee law requires four hours of school attennow.
Regardless the charges that these children face, they deserve to live in a more comfortable and better equipped detention facility than they are getting now.
dance each day.
In 2018, 5,300 children were brought by law enforcement to Juvenile Court on delinquency complaints. Of that number, 926 children were detained in Juvenile Court’s detention center charged with personal violent crimes and possession of a weapon. Of those who were detained, 23 were charged with murder, 50 were charged with aggravated robbery, 10 were charged with carjacking, five with rape of a child, one was charged with aggravated kidnapping, and 22 were charged with aggravated assault.
Regardless the charges that these children face, they deserve to live in a more comfortable and better equipped detention facility than they are getting The new Youth Justice & Education Center now in the design stage will be a state-of-the-art facility that will house children in a better and more humane environment.
There will be green space so juveniles can feel the warmth of sunlight and breathe fresh air. There will be large exercise areas – indoors and outdoors – so these young people, under the supervision of security officers, can work off bottled-up energy.
And Hope Academy will be designed as a modern school with spacious, welllit rooms and a computer lab conducive to learning. With the new center, we can offer much-needed vocational training so some of these children can learn a skill that someday may result in a job.
No child should be without hope for a future.
This new Youth Justice & Education Center may not solve all of their troubles, but it will go a long way in showing these children and their families that life doesn’t have to be bleak, and that the elected leaders of their community really do care.
Dan H. Michael is the Judge of Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County.