Albany County District Attorney David Soares, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun seem to agree: Young people are running amok, in and out of Family Court, without accountability. Soares, Adams and LeBrun blame New York’s Raise the Age legislation. They’re wrong.
To address this problem, we need honest conversations and transformative social change. Instead, too many of our public officials are using their influence to lead us astray in the name of public safety.
In a recent column, LeBrun says it’s “crystal clear” that Raise the Age and bail reform are the primary causes of youth violence and crime that threaten our public safety. That’s simply not true. In fact, recent research from the Vera Institute of Justice, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and others suggests that changes in bail reform and Raise the Age have had an overall beneficial impact on recidivism and have enhanced public safety.
What’s more, LeBrun, Soares and others neglect to acknowledge the widespread failure to use resources attached to the Raise the Age initiative, resources that were meant to provide needed support and assistance for teens caught up in the system.
Adams and Soares have also steadfastly refused to recognize the abundant research alerting us to the fact that young people between the ages of 12 and 18 are not adults. Most are in the process of developing their cognitive behavioral abilities and skills. Many will not have reached a point that will allow them to make good behavioral decisions. Imprisoning these young people is not the answer. Treating young people as legal adults has not worked. It has only led to individual despair, harm, and failure, and has fueled the pervasive racial disparities that exist for young people of color throughout the juvenile legal system. In Albany County and throughout much of the state, 94 % of the youth detained in secure facilities are Black and brown.
But we have options. Increasingly, jurisdictions across the country are finding more effective approaches that divert young people from the legal system and provide them with the guidance, education, treatment and services that can allow them to develop into constructive members of society. Albany County, for example, has supported an initiative to move our young people towards zero youth detention, an effort modeled after a successful program begun in Kings County, Washington state.
While diversions and social support services are important, something more basic and transformative is needed. We have only to look at youth in our suburbs and other wealthy communities; they are rarely faced with the same problems as youth stuck in poverty. The keys to reducing crime are, for starters, safe and affordable housing for all, adequate healthy food, full employment, good medical care, good schools and equal justice in our legal system. Truly transformative change would also include a guaranteed annual minimum income for all families, meaningful action on structural racism, and meaningful action on guns – in other words, a strong national, state and local commitment to equity and social justice for all.
Our leaders must stop taking the easy way out by blaming young people of color for crime and violence that largely spring from poverty, social inequities and structural racism. We have created the conditions under which our children live; we know how to stop crime and violence and promote public safety. What is sorely missing is the will and commitment to make the needed transformative changes.
Alice Green of Albany is the director of the Center for Law and Justice.
Credit:Source link
