Media Coverage

Treat Young Offenders Differently

Article Source: Hartford Courant – Tuesday 30th, 2005

Dr. Steven Berkowitz and Leonard Barbieri

The governor has ordered the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown closed by 2008 and replaced with three small secure treatment centers, two for boys and one for girls. It was clear from the outset that the CJTS was an abysmal waste of money. But it begs the question of how such an inappropriate facility could have been built for adolescents.

The answer lies in the state's management of adolescents in the juvenile justice system. That age group gets lost in agencies designed for other difficult jobs.

The overwhelming deficiencies of the CJTS have been well documented, including the fact that it was modeled after an Ohio high-security institution for adults and not for the nonviolent juveniles it houses in Connecticut. But little attention has been given to the incongruity of this facility and the previous one at Long Lane being administered by an agency, the state Department of Children and Families, that has two other extremely demanding mandates - child protection and providing for children's behavioral health needs.

Policy-makers overseeing secure juvenile institutions must have expertise in this field. For that reason, Connecticut's juvenile detention centers are also at a disadvantage: They operate within the judicial branch, whose primary mission clearly is not running juvenile jails, but managing the courts.

Connecticut should examine strategies in states that have effectively managed their juvenile justice system - including agencies whose primary mission is managing secure juvenile facilities. Such an agency would relieve the overburdened DCF, allowing it to focus on its critical mandates of child protection and behavioral health.

Successful interventions with juveniles require an understanding that they are not criminals just shy of adulthood. Delinquent behavior in children is not the equivalent of criminal behavior in adults. Nor are law-breaking adolescents on an inevitable pathway to crime and sociopathy.

Developmentally, adolescents are in multiple physiological, psychological and intellectual transitions that make them vulnerable to delinquent behavior but that also hold the promise of positive social change. But Connecticut's criminal justice system makes few accommodations to these adolescents. They are neither children nor adults. As such, they require interventions that are neither for children or adults, but are designed for their own transitional age range.

A Connecticut youth authority dealing exclusively with adolescents would not only focus expertise and resources on this high-risk population, it also could raise the age at which teenagers enter the adult court and prison system from 16 to 18 - in line with the rest of the nation - without restructuring other state agencies. It would release the Department of Correction from its difficult role of ensuring the safety of incarcerated 16- to 18-year-olds.

Teenagers are the most vulnerable crime-prone age group. Our criminal justice system must be structured with the understanding of this high-risk age group, and it must possess the skills needed to keep them from becoming adult criminals.

Dr. Steven Berkowitz is medical director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence at the Yale Child Study Center. Leonard Barbieri is a former prison warden, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Correction and judicial detention center supervisor. He is now at the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence at the Yale Child Study Center.