Then and Now

Are youthful offenders today fundamentally different than they were 20, 30 years ago? Much ink has been spilled on this question, and many an editorialist has met a deadline with stories sensationalizing the leaner, meaner youth criminal. Neologisms have been constructed (think “supercriminal”); panels assembled; laws reinforced (think proposition 21 in 2000, or Jessica’s law in 2006). But what of it?

The question came up recently. I was engaged in a discussion with a couple of retired juvenile justice system administrators, two Latino men in their early 60’s. We were discussing the current challenges facing the reforms (a favorite subject lately), and they were rightly pointing out the two biggest obstacles facing the system: cultural resistance to change among the staff population, and ubiquitous violence among the ward population. I responded, “Yeah, but what’s new? The system has known this for years, through several reform cycles. What makes you think there are now real solutions? What in the current reforms (which are conventional enough) makes us think that the system will respond differently?”

One of these elder statesmen of system shuffled in his seat, obviously riffled, and replied thus to my admittedly dismissive objections, “What we need is respect between staff and wards. A respect initiated by the staff and reciprocated by the wards—we used to have that in the ‘70’s, but this generation of staff and wards are different. (At this point he went on a lengthy tangent about the identically immature behavior of staff and wards. “They just wear different uniforms,” he said.) There is less respect. The wards are more violent, more fearless. They don’t respect human life.”

This is a common enough perspective, despite the fact that juvenile crime has actually hit record lows in the last decade or so (though recent data indicates a rise, especially in middling cities like Oakland and Baltimore).

I responded, “ But what’s the difference between a youth in the ‘70’s and a youth in 2006? Fundamentally, nothing…” I was immediately cut off by the other retiree, who interjected, with a wisp of aged condescension, “I personally disagree. Like my partner said, these guys are really different from the guys I dealt with thirty years ago. Drive-by shootings didn’t exist back then. You would have innocent children being killed by stray bullets back then (referring to a recent shooting that killed a three year old girl in Pomona, CA).”

I never got a chance to develop my argument. But as I sat there, silenced by forced veneration, I began to question my own opinion. Have youthful offenders really evolved as criminals over the past 30 years? The system has certainly changed. It has become prisonized to a degree unimaginable in the ‘70’s, and the average ward has indeed become younger, meaner, angrier, more reckless. The streets seem to have become meaner too, more disorganized, more brutal. But has a fundamental change occurred, and if so, would we even be able to detect it?

I still think there is no fundamental change—social conditions have perhaps become more acute (think the crack baby phenom of the ‘80’s as one example, the swelling of the underclass as another); but this seems to be a quantitative change, one of degree that has not, as yet, effected a more basic change in quality. But that said, the old solutions may nonetheless be obsolete (or perhaps they always were).

Youth criminals are more intense today, expressions of a more desperate social condition, but not different. Drugs, especially hard drugs like Meth play a huge role, as do guns. These factors change the face of crime and the criminal, and raise the stakes exponentially—but they do not, or have not as yet, changed the kid.

The question we need to be asking ourselves is not the qualitative one. In fact, to go down that road, I am convinced, would be perilous. I am sure that it would lead to the dissolution of the Juvenile System altogether—something we might already be seeing (the juvenile system is now literally a mere department in the adult corrections system). In all of our discussions, we must be careful to constantly reaffirm the fundamental difference between youth and adults. That, in fact, should be above all our greatest interest.