Blended sentencing bill would incarcerate more kids
Tennessee’s youth justice crisis has earned nationalmedia attention, but those problems aren’t about the youth the system is designed to serve; they’re about the adults who failed them.
The state needs to address the problems in its own facilities; instead, some in the legislature are trying to fill those same facilities with more young people.
The latest distraction would overhaul Tennessee’s youth justice system by introducing an outdated and convoluted sentencing option called “blended sentencing.” Under blended sentencing legislation, children processed through juvenile courts and held in detention centers would be further punished if they aren’t “rehabilitated” and “successful” by the time they’re 19.
The proposals are based on the lie that youth offending is up. That’s not true. Youth arrests in Tennessee and Memphis are actually on the decline, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
A serious response to public safety requires a tailored approach. Adding a new complicated sentencing option is anything but tailored: it would widen the net and lock up more youth in horrid facilities for even longer.
Blended sentencing legislation is complex and ineffective
Blended sentencing schemes simultaneously give youth an adult and a juvenile court sentence. Courts have an option to “stay,” or hit pause on, the adult court sentence until the youth turns 19, at which point a court would again decide whether or not to impose the adult court sentence. If the court decided to impose the adult sentence, the young person would then serve their sentence in the adult prison or probation system.
Confused? You should be.
Blended sentencing schemes are notoriously complicated and require significant resources to implement, with absolutely no evidence that they improve individual youth outcomes, or community safety. In fact, blended sentencing has not gained traction since the 1980s and 1990s–and decades of implementation show no clear evidence that these schemes reduce crime.
The failed blended sentencing bill, HB 7073, proposed by Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-crossville, and Sen. Brent Taylor, R-memphis, during the August 2023 Special Session, exemplified the complexity and ineffectiveness of such legislation and raised more questions than it answered.
Amid a public defender shortage, where would Memphis find attorneys to represent youth in 10-year cases?
If the state plans to more closely supervise youth, where would the additional youth probation officers and social workers come from? This bill would have put undue strain on juvenile courts, raising questions about the funding and staffing for extended legal representation, probation, and additional court proceedings in a court system that is already overburdened and struggles to provide corrections staff for the existing population.
Spurred by Memphis Republicans, bill has a shot at being passed
Back to the teenagers–the bill’s implications for them are alarming: a 19year-old could face adult criminal sentencing for non-criminal failures like not graduating high school or securing employment, often due to barriers like learning disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, or court-imposed barriers like a juvenile record.
This approach would send young people to adult prison for not overcoming these challenges, and even penalize youth who go to college rather than enter the workforce.
Senator Taylor and Rep. Mark White, R-memphis, just revived similar legislation, and despite testimony raising severe concerns about constitutionality, it’s on a fast track to becoming law.
National experts are not alone in our concern–the Youth Justice Action Council (YJAC), an organization of justice-impacted and justice-adjacent young people in Memphis and Shelby County, have been vocal in their opposition to the practice of transferring young people to the adult system, and statewide and Memphis organizations have raised concerns about passing complex blended sentencing legislation without due consideration of the consequences. But we’ve seen how dissenting voices are silenced on Tennessee’s Capitol Hill.
We agree that Tennessee should be serious about safety: investing in improving its juvenile justice system and resourcing communities with tools to support our teenagers and to keep us all safe, but passing blended sentencing legislation is a distraction, a poor shortand long-term investment. Instead of investing limited state and local resources in a system that the National Center for Juvenile Justice has described as “causing more confusion than good,” we should be investing in proven strategies to improve youth outcomes to create a safer Memphis for all.
Joshua Rovner is director of youth justice at The Sentencing Project, which advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults.