Why is JDAI so hard?
Excerpted from a speech at the first annual state-wide JDAI conference in Massachusetts.
On its most obvious level, JDAI seeks to rationalize the use of detention, to ensure that the right kids—but only the right kids—are detained. Over the years, and throughout the country, sites have proven that a more rational use of detention means fewer kids detained. They have also proven that kids do better if we keep them at home and out of institutions. JDAI doesn’t seek to reduce unnecessary or inappropriate detention for its own sake, but because its indiscriminate use has such profound consequences for both youth development and public safety.
Given these laudable ambitions, which most people embrace, why is it such a trying journey from the concepts of detention reform to actual implementation? I suggest it’s hard because JDAI rests upon two notions that are really quite different from most reform endeavors.
First, JDAI is genuinely about limiting incarceration. In America, perhaps more than any other country, we believe that locking people up—or threatening to do so—is what saves us from bedlam in the streets. A reform initiative premised on the notion that we are inappropriately or unnecessarily jailing kids, therefore, smacks right into the face of this basic belief. It confronts the systemic status quo as directly as possible. And, as difficult as confronting the incarceration-equals-public-safety myth has always been, it’s harder now than ever. Why?
Quite simply, as the collective complexion of inmates, detainees and probationers has gotten darker and darker, the debate regarding our nation’s addiction to incarceration has become harder to wage. Today, the issues of incarceration and race are inextricably linked, making real change twice as hard. Consider this: would the laws, policies, and practices that drive detention be so resistant to change if the kids in question were not overwhelmingly poor children of color?
So, detention reform is hard because it takes on a sacred cow (our addiction to incarceration) and, in so doing, speaks directly for the rights and interests of a powerless, disadvantaged, disliked minority. That’s hard!
And, there is a second fundamental notion embedded in JDAI that makes detention reform hard: It’s about changing adult behavior!
Our use of detention is largely driven by policy and practice. That is, adults determine our detention destiny as much, if not more, than youth. Adults decide who does or doesn’t get admitted to secure custody and adults determine how long youth spend in confinement. JDAI is premised on the belief that the behavior of the adults who manage and work in the system must change if we are to make progress.
This notion—that reform begins with changing adult behavior—is radically different from most juvenile justice initiatives, which typically focus on changing youth behavior, as is the case with projects like drug courts, boot camps, or assessment centers.
So, to the extent that your JDAI work has caused anxiety, even anger…to the extent that you have been frustrated or perplexed…to the extent that you want to shake whoever makes you talk about stuff that is complicated, or sensitive or confusing…to that extent, let me say you are probably right on target in terms of progress, because if this isn’t hard, you probably aren’t doing it.
If you are not being challenged to change your policies, practices and your individual actions, you are not doing it. If you are not at least occasionally embarrassed explaining this or that aspect of practice, you are not doing it. If you are not getting criticized, you are not doing it. Indeed, if you don’t routinely have a stomach ache, you are probably not really doing detention reform because stomach aches and challenging or changing the status quo go hand in hand. Believe me, I personally sustain Maalox’s market share!
Why, then, should you all subject yourself to this? Would you like to detain fewer kids and also improve re-arrest, failure-to-appear, and recidivism rates? Would you like to safely reduce commitments? Would you like to focus probation supervision on kids most at risk? Would you like to reduce racial disparities and build partnerships with families and communities of color so kids of color have more opportunities? Would you like to re-invest public dollars from costly, unhealthy, abusive institutions to community-based services? Would you ultimately like to do more than reduce the harm the system so often does and, instead, actually help these kids—with their terrible odds of adult success—to do better?
If you wish for these things—and that’s why most of you got involved with children’s services in the first place—then hang tough. Stay at the table. Be honest. Be self-critical. Rely on the data. Insist on reaching high, out of the box, for the impossible. It is your most lofty ambitions you seek to fulfill here; that’s why it’s so damn hard, but it’s also why there’s no alternative.
Bart Lubow
Director of Programs for High-Risk Youth
Annie E. Casey Foundation
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