In the United States, 90,000 youth find themselves in juvenile detention centers on any given night. 2.2 million youth are arrested each year. In California, the state Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) youth prison system costs us $216,000 per youth per year, while a mere $8,000 per student is allocated to our public schools. On top of the financial costs of youth prisons in our state, there is a very serious emotional cost of locking kids up without providing them with the education, rehabilitation or mentorship they need to turn their lives around. In fact, California has a recidivism rate of 72%- that means far too many youth who mess up as immature adolescents end up endlessly cycling in and out of youth and adult prisons. Worse, it’s a cycle that discriminates–over 90% of the California youth prison population is youth of color.
The current model just adds damage to damage. Take M.T.*, a prisoner in California’s Division of Juvenile Justice since 2002, when he was 15 years old. Due to racial tensions at Ventura youth prison, M.T. fears going to school on the inside. Instead of fixing the tensions, Ventura staff punish M.T. for missing, ie. refusing to risk getting attacked while in, school.
In 2005, M.T. suffered a devastating loss–his mother passed away. He, his lawyer, and social worker petitioned DJJ to allow M.T. to attend her funeral. DJJ refused. M.T. is desperate for mental health treatment to help him deal with his anxiety, depression, loneliness, and anger. “I wake up in the morning very angry and I don’t know why,” he says. M.T. has also requested to be transferred further south in order to be close enough so that his remaining family can visit him but his pleas have been ignored.
“My closest family and friends need me the most, just like I need them,” says M.T. “I need my family support; the little support that I do have is my backbone.” At 23, M.T. should be preparing to re-enter the world he left as a teen. But with untreated mental health needs and geographic isolation from his family, M.T. is just trying to survive.
Fortunately, there is a better way. A new film from our Books Not Bars campaign lays out a blueprint for juvenile justice 
based on the successes of other systems across the United States. In Missouri, in Washington DC, and in Santa Clara county, just to name a few, state and local governments have reduced the number of youth who are locked up and saved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. These programs emphasize keeping youth in their homes and communities as much as possible and offer community-based programs that provide mentorship, job-training, education, and individual and family counseling. For those youth who have gotten into the most serious trouble, programs must provide intensive counseling and supervision by trained youth specialists in small residential centers that are close to home and built for rehabilitation.
These models not only work to rehabilitate youth‚ they also reduce recidivism and cost less. Just look at Missouri. In 1983, Missouri closed its youth prison and replaced it with regional home-like rehabilitation centers. The result? A recidivism rate of just 7.3%, and an annual cost of about $28,000 per year, per youth.
California was once ground zero for youth incarceration in this country. But now we can choose a better way and adopt a better approach so that the poisonous environment M.T. experiences isn’t the fate of any more of California’s children. By Learning from Our Mistakes, we can now lead the nation in transforming juvenile justice systems to lift youth up rather than locking them down.
Join us, Tuesday, July 20th for the World Premiere of Learning from Our Mistakes. You’ll be the first to see the film, plus enjoy a live Q & A with youth featured in the film, policy makers and community leaders.
*M.T. requested that we only use his initials because of concerns with using his full name.
