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

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.org/~/media/Pubs/Topics/JuvenileJustice/DetentionReform/NoPlaceForKids/JJ_NoPlaceForKids_Full.pdf.As this article will address, the harms caused by the current system are not limited to the "training school" model (a term often used to refer to large congregate care facilities). 4.A 2011 poll of Americans' views on youth justice found, for example, that By a margin of 78-15 percent, the public overwhelming [sic] wants the focus of the juvenile justice system to be on prevention and rehabilitation, rather than incarceration and punishment.Americans believe that prevention and rehabilitation will prevent NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL LAW REVIEW VOLUME 56 | 2011/12fails to meet these goals and instead systematically fails young people, 5 their families, crime victims, and public safety, often at exorbitant taxpayer cost.Additionally, there are often vast disconnects between the severity of the acts for which children are in court and the system's responses.Children are frequently, particularly children of color and those with social service needs, harshly punished and isolated for low-level and non-violent offenses.Decades of research demonstrates that children who have committed a crime or delinquency 6 more future acts of crime and violence as compared to children who commit similar crimes or delinquencies and never become system involved or those who are not detained or incarcerated and instead receive communitybased supervision, treatment, and services.7 This article highlights seven core principles of youth justice reform.Grounding reform efforts in these seven principles will increase the likelihood of their success and sustainability.The article proceeds in seven sections, each corresponding to one principle.Each section introduces a principle, describes how the status quo's failure to adopt that principle is causing harm, and brief ly articulates policy solutions grounded in the relevant principle.8 These principles are general in their nature and designed to be applicable across jurisdictions, despite the logistical and sometimes legal differences that exist in different states and localities.9 youth recidivism, and that young people who have committed crimes are able to change and the system should give them the opportunity to do so.Campaign for Youth Justice, Youth Justice System Survey, administered and reported by GBA Strategies 1 (2011) (emphasis omitted), http://www.gbastrategies.com/public_files/cfyj101111m1.pdf. 5.The terms "youth," "young people," "children," and "kids" are used interchangeably in this article and in much youth justice literature.All refer to people under the age of eighteen.6.An act of delinquency is generally defined as an act that would be considered a criminal act but for the age of the person committing the act.In other words, a twelve-year-old who is found by law to have committed the act of robbery may be said to have committed an act of "delinquency" or of "juvenile delinquency," whereas a twenty-five-year-old who is found by law to have committed the act of robbery is said to have committed a crime.States differ in terms of the youngest and oldest ages at which children can be prosecuted for acts of juvenile delinquency.Some states, such as New York, prosecute children as young as seven for acts of juvenile delinquency.See N.Y.Fam.Ct.Act § 301.2 (McKinney 2011). 7.This term is used to refer to forms of supervision (such as probation), treatment (such as mental health and substance abuse treatment), and services (such as vocational training and educational services) that can be provided in community settings for children who are youth-justice involved.These kinds of programs and services are also sometimes referred to as alternatives-to-detention and alternatives-toincarceration.The author uses the term community-based supervision, treatment, and services because the author believes it is more descriptive and does not inherently posit this approach as an alternative.8.

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