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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
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| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
In a departure from expected crime trends, a new study says California's juvenile incarceration rate and juvenile crime rate have both dropped dramatically, prompting some experts to urge a restructuring of the way juvenile criminals are handled.
"It's astonishing," said Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and one of the study's authors. "Because the general assumptions driving criminal justice policy for the last 30 years have been, 'If you have more people in prison, you have less crime on the streets.' And clearly, that's not the case."
Commitments to the state's juvenile correctional facilities have dropped this year to 65 per 100,000 youths -- the lowest rate in 47 years, according to a study released Wednesday.
The drop comes despite a more than double population increase in the same time period, and it coincides with the lowest 2004 juvenile arrest rate in more than three decades.
Macallair and his colleagues say the data should force Californians to rethink the state's approach to juvenile justice, although he stopped short Wednesday of prescribing specific changes to the system.
"We have seen a failed experiment in public safety," Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said in a news conference to reveal the study's results. "And it's out of control."
The study coincides with a political push to overhaul the state's overstressed prison system, which has swollen to accommodate about 171,000 prisoners -- twice its capacity -- and is under the oversight of a court-appointed special master.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week called for a special session of the Legislature in August to address needed changes, including building two new prisons and moving some inmates who are nearing the end of their sentences into "re-entry" facilities that would prepare them for release.
Sacramento Sheriff-elect John McGinness said the study should prompt a rethinking of how some juvenile crimes are addressed.
"There is a risk associated with putting youth in confined quarters with others who misbehave," he said.
"And when it relates to juvenile offenders, we have to ask the question if we can get them on a different path. We have a greater obligation to try."
The policy implications reach far beyond youths, according to Macallair and others at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a long-time criminal justice policy research group.
Adult incarceration and arrest rates also showed no correlation: Both rose significantly over the past several decades, according to the study, which used data compiled from the state departments of Justice, and Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Between 1980 and 2004, despite a 500 percent increase in the rate of adult imprisonment in California, the felony arrest rate jumped by 11 percent statewide.
The leap was significant among men 40 to 59, who typically have low offense and arrest rates but recently have seen dramatic increases in both.
The study's authors believe it reflects drug-addicted men who have been in and out of the system for years and finally receive lengthy prison terms.
"We have to start taking a look at what this may mean," Macallair said.
"And frankly I'm not sure of what it means or why it happened."
He said the juvenile rates cannot be explained by diversions of cases to adult court, or diversions of incarcerations to county camps and other facilities.
"This is possibly the best-behaved generation of kids we've had," Macallair said.
"It's an interesting look at the whole incapacitation theory."
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