THROWBACK THURSDAY: REPORTS
Smart, Safe and Fair
Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crime, and Reduce Racial Inequalities
Published in September of 2018, the Smart, Safe and Fair report was a collaboration between the Justice Policy Institute and the National Center for Victims of Crime.
The justice system treats youth charged with violent offenses in ways that are unnecessarily expensive, ineffective and unjust. Although the research is clear that many youth convicted of a violent crime are best treated in a community-based setting, our default response to youth violence is still confinement. In Smart, Safe, and Fair, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) spoke with members of the victims’ community to further examine the barriers to treating youth involved in violent crime in the community, and to gauge their support for these proposed reforms.
The crime victims we spoke with were consistent in their support for a change from a status quo they see as costly, ineffective, and damaging to youth and their families — all while failing to meet the needs of crime victims themselves. Instead, they expressed a belief that there should be no categorical bar on serving more young people involved in violent crime in the community, particularly because youth engaged in violence are overwhelmingly victims themselves, and should receive appropriate services.
Research shows that youth convicted of a crime who are served in the community are significantly less likely to reoffend than if they are confined, regardless of their offense type. Treating youth in the community makes everyone safer. Serving youth in the community is also significantly more cost effective than confinement and mitigates the disproportionate impact of confinement in the justice system on youth of color.
In the last two decades, largely in response to this body of research, there has been a seismic shift in the way confinement is used. According to federal data trends reported by the U.S. Department of Justice, since 1997, there has been nearly a 50 percent decline in the number of confined youth. This drop occurred during an era of historic declines in crime. Today, far fewer youth are confined and communities are safer. This clearly demonstrates that policymakers are not forced to choose between locking up more youth and being safe. To the contrary, incarcerating fewer youth is a key piece of creating a safer society.
However, the benefits of safely reducing the rate of incarcerated youth have not accrued equally among all. These reductions in the youth incarceration rate have been concentrated among nonviolent offenses — 70 percent of the population decline. This distinction between nonviolent and violent offenses that is frequently made by policymakers is artificial and not grounded in a strong public safety argument. Whether or not a crime is considered violent depends on the jurisdiction. For example, assaultive behavior can be prosecuted as nonviolent in some jurisdictions and violent in others. Moreover, research shows that confinement leads to higher rates of reoffending compared to community-based strategies.
In addition, despite plummeting numbers of youth in confinement, racial and ethnic disparities have actually increased. Thus, it is clear that reducing the number of youth of color in confinement requires an intentional racial justice strategy that extends beyond simply changing policies and practices that drive confinement.
Despite some recent successes in safely reducing the rate of incarcerated youth, there is much work remaining. Diverting white youth engaged in nonviolent behavior is not a defensible strategy to roll back decades of overuse of incarceration and will not make communities safer. To sustainably reduce youth violence, recidivism, and racial disparities, we must focus on changing the many laws, policies, and practices that prohibit young people involved in a violent crime from taking advantage of effective interventions in a community setting.
This view is shared by many victims of crime, who are increasingly demanding change from a status quo that they see as costly, ineffective, and damaging to youth and their families. In Smart, Safe, and Fair, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) explore how to build more effective approaches to serve youth involved in a violent crime in the community.
