When the Cure Makes You Ill: Seven Core Principles to Change the Course of Youth Justice

Our nation's current youth justice 1 system is iatrogenic, 2 a term that refers to a cure that worsens the very thing it is trying to fix. 3 The system's operation often results in increased violence and recidivism, the very same outcomes it allegedly intends to remedy.Many Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, would agree that children who commit harmful acts should be held accountable in proportion to the act committed and provided with meaningful help and opportunity to change, and that the operation of the youth justice system should not result in increased violence and criminality. 4 Yet our current youth justice system routinely 1.Some of the literature referenced in this article uses the term " juvenile justice."This term is synonymous with "youth justice."The author prefers the term "youth justice," given the negative connotations of the word "juvenile," which is generally used when discussing "juvenile delinquents" but not, for example, when asking a friend how her or his child is doing. 2.The origins of the word iatrogenic are in the medical arena.The word has gained usage in the youth justice field to describe how youth justice interventions can exacerbate harms.It should be noted that my use of this term in no way is intended to connote or imply that young people are themselves the "harm" or social ill.The author uses the term to call attention to the ways in which current system interventions can worsen youth and community outcomes.See, e.g., Uberto Gatti et al., Iatrogenic Effect of Juvenile Justice, 50 J.Child Psychol.& Psychiatry 991, 991-98 (2009) (finding that youth who are "poor, impulsive, poorly supervised by their parents, and exposed to deviant friends are more likely, for the same degree of antisocial behavior, to undergo intervention by the Juvenile Court, and that this intervention greatly increases the likelihood of involvement with the penal system in adulthood").Gatti's research also found that juvenile court interventions involving placement had the most negative impact.Id. at 991.Although the research sample used in this analysis was from Canada, much of the reasoning applies to the United States.Similar outcomes have been found in other jurisdictions both inside and outside of the United States.See, e.g., David Huizinga et al., The Effect of Juvenile Justice System Processing on Subsequent Delinquent and Criminal Behavior: A Cross-National Study 126 (2003) (a 2003 study tracking youth in Denver and in Bremen, Germany and finding that "those arrested and sanctioned display higher frequencies of involvement in crime at later stages in their life than do their delinquent age mates who were not so sanctioned"); Lesley McAra & Susan McVie, Youth Justice?: The Impact of System Contact on Patterns of Desistance From Offending, 4 Eur.J. Criminology 315, 325 (2007) (finding that those who faced a juvenile hearing were nearly twice as likely to admit engaging in serious offenses (forty-eight percent versus twenty-eight percent) in the following year as youth with identical backgrounds and prior self-reported offending behavior who did not face court hearings). 3.that makes problems worse," says Paul DeMuro, who served as commissioner of the Pennsylvania juvenile corrections system in the late 1970s and has since served as an expert witness in numerous legal cases concerning conditions of confinement in juvenile facilities."The model has been around for 150 years, and has proven a failure by any measure."Richard A. Mendel, The Annie E. Casey Found.,No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration 1, 4 (2011), http://www.aecf

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