Burning Down the House : The End of Juvenile Prison (9781595589668) (53 page)

  
31
  
the pervasive use of solitary confinement
: See Chapter 7.

  
31
  
reported being placed in isolation
: Perhaps because this practice is so out of line with international standards, the generally neutral authors of “Conditions of Confinement: Findings from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement” present this finding with an uncharacteristic editorial comment: “Maintaining discipline and control is critical but challenging,” they write. “Nevertheless, some may find SYRP findings on the prevalence of solitary confinement both surprising and problematic.”

  
31
  
The more often young people are handcuffed
: Sedlak, McPherson, and Basena, “Nature and Risk of Victimization,” p. 6.

  
33
  
“Many of the youths informed us”
: Investigation of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys and the Jackson Juvenile Offender Center, Marianna, Florida, United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, December 1, 2011, p. 25,
www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/dozier_findltr_12-1-11.pdf
?. For more on this facility, see Chapter 14.

  
35
  
“Friday Night Fights”
: James Gilligan,
Violence in California Prisons: A Proposal for Research into Patterns and Cures
(New York: Diane Publishing, 2000), p. 13.

  
35
  
Guards would place known gang rivals together
: Ibid. According to subsequent investigations, wards at the facility where Mark was held were subjected to what administrators called “unofficial sanctions” for various unnamed offenses. These included being forced into cells filled with urine and feces (those who demurred were pepper sprayed) as well as a practice called “slamming,” in which guards dragged their targets out of range of security cameras and slammed them repeatedly on the ground or against a cell, then kept them from receiving medical treatment for as long as twenty-four hours.

  
35
  
misses many if not most of the central developmental tasks of adolescence
: “Raising Teens: Ten Tasks of Adolescent Development,” MIT Work-Life Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
hrweb.mit.edu/worklife/raising-teens/ten-tasks.html
.

2. Birth of an Abomination

  
38
  
Its managers, according to the law
: Sanford J. Fox, “The Early History of the Court,”
Future of Children: The Juvenile Court
6, no. 3 (Winter 1996): 29–39,
www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/06_03_01.pdf
.

  
39
  
“a historical milestone in the American family culture”
: Kenneth Wooden,
Weeping in the Playtime of Others: America's Incarcerated Children
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 24.

  
39
  
Social engineers of the day
: Barry Krisberg, “Juvenile Corrections: An Overview,” in
The Oxford Handbook of Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice
, ed. Barry C. Feld and Donna M. Bishop (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 749.

  
39
  
early example of racial profiling
: Two centuries later, America's racial and ethnic makeup has shifted, and with it both the locus of our fears and the population of our prisons. Today, it is black and brown children from our nation's poorest neighborhoods who are painted and perceived as a threat to the social order—and who are, accordingly, locked up in greatest numbers.

  
39
  
“The lad's parents are Irish”
: R. Pickett,
House of Refuge
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969), p. 6.

  
40
  
the rapid influx of confined juveniles
: “Our City Charities; The New-York House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents,”
New York Times
, January 23, 1860,
www.nytimes.com/1860/01/23/news/our-city-charities-the-new-york-house-of-refuge-for-juvenile-delinquents.html
.

  
40
  
agents of the House of Refuge simply roamed the streets
: Barry Krisberg, “Juvenile Justice: Improving the Quality of Care,” National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, 1992, p. 2,
www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/quality-of-care.pdf
.

  
41
  
“The boys' house”
: “Our City Charities.”

  
42
  
“While some of the children”
: Ibid.

  
43
  
“Injudicious friends of this”
: Ibid.

  
43
  
Inside the House of Refuge
: Ibid.

  
44
  
As cities scrambled to keep up with a massive influx of immigrants
: Barry C. Feld,
Bad Kids: Race and the Transformation of the Juvenile Court
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 4.

  
44
  
“constituted the first specialized institutions”
: Ibid., p. 49.

  
44
  
“Children confined in the houses of refuge”
: A. Pisciotta, “Saving the Children: The Promise and Practice of
Parens Patriae
, 1838–98,”
Crime and Delinquency
28 (1982): 410–25, cited in Randall G. Shelden, “From Houses of Refuge to ‘Youth Corrections': Same Story, Different Day” (paper prepared for the Midwestern Criminal Justice Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, September 29–October 1, 2005),
www.sheldensays.com/Res-twelve.htm
.

  
44
  
“Punitive delinquency institutions”
: Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 273.

  
45
  
Lyman School for Boys
: The first to open, the Lyman School was also one of the first to be shut down, in 1972, for “massive failure and child brutality,” according to Kenneth Wooden in
Weeping in the Playtime of Others
.

  
45
  
“Those who sought to reform juvenile delinquents”
: Joseph F. Kett,
Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present
(New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 132, cited in Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 55.

  
45
  
“As children of immigrants and the poor”
: Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 55.

  
45
  
“In an early version of ‘blaming the victims'”
: David J. Rothman,
Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternative in Progressive America
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 24, cited in Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 55. Similar victim blaming continues to this day. Across the country, young people told me that whatever indignities they were forced to endure—beatings by guards, sexual abuse, “chemical restraints,” long stints in solitary confinement—came with the message that they had brought it upon themselves.

  
45
  
parens patriae
: “Juvenile Justice: History and Philosophy—The Origins of the Juvenile Court,” Law Library—American Law and Legal Information,
law.jrank.org/pages/1489/Juvenile-Justice-History-Philosophy-origins-juvenile-court.html#ixzz2PzJ1gTQr
.

  
46
  
many judges did their best to advance the rehabilitative mandate
: Fox, “Early History of the Court,” p. 29.

  
46
  
“courts considered what was best”
: Ibid.

  
46
  
“The child who must be brought into court”
: Wilbur R. Miller, ed.,
The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012), p. 930.

  
46
  
“The judge on a bench”
: Ibid.

  
47
  
“From the very beginning”
: Annie E. Casey Foundation, “A Road Map for Juvenile Justice Reform,” 2012, p. 4,
www.aecf.org/~/media/PublicationFiles/AEC180essay_booklet_MECH.pdf
.

  
47
  
juvenile court was an instant sensation
: Richard A. Lawrence and Craig Hemmens, “History and Development of the Juvenile Court and Justice Process,” in
Juvenile Justice: A Text/Reader
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), p. 59.

  
47
  
parens patriae had been invoked
: Feld,
Bad Kids
, pp. 52–53.

  
47
  
Ex parte Crouse
: Fox, “Early History of the Court,” p. 32.

  
47
  
parens patriae trumped parenthood
: Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 53.

  
48
  
“may not the natural parent”
:
Ex parte Crouse 14
, 1839, in Jeffrey A. Jenkins,
The American Courts: A Procedural Approach
(Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2011), p. 175.

  
48
  
“became the precedent for 20th Century cases”
: Fox, “Early History of the Court,” p. 32.

  
48
  
“was heavily influenced by the antagonism toward Irish parents”
: Krisberg, “Juvenile Corrections,” p. 2.

  
48
  
Once a child was committed to a House of Refuge
: Feld,
Bad Kids
, p. 54.

  
49
  
“Juvenile justice is replete”
: Bernardine Dohrn, “The School, the Child, and the Court,” in
A Century of Juvenile Justice
, ed. Margaret K. Rosenheim, Franklin E. Zimring, David S. Tanenhaus, and Bernardine Dohrn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 295.

  
49
  
Kent v. United States
: American Bar Association, “The History of Juvenile Justice,”
Dialogue on Youth and Justice
(Chicago: American Bar Association, Division for Public Education, 2007),
www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/publiced/features/DYJpart1.authcheck.dam.pdf
.

  
50
  
a parade of investigations into the St. Charles Reformatory
: Dohrn, “School, the Child, and the Court,” p. 300.

  
50
  
the staff believed that a fourth of boys should not be there at all
: Ibid.

  
50
  
“In the overall picture”
: Ibid., p. 301.

3. Other People's Children

  
52
  
“One of the underpinnings of the correction business”
: Deckle McLean, “Jerome Miller and the Correction Business,”
Boston Globe
, November 15, 1970.

  
52
  
“What the best and wisest parent”
: Michael Grossberg, “Changing Conceptions of Child Welfare in the United States, 1820–1935,” in
A Century of Juvenile Justice
, ed. Margaret K. Rosenheim, Franklin E. Zimring, David S. Tanenhaus, and Bernardine Dohrn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 3.

  
53
  
Survey of Youth in Residential Placement
: Andrea J. Sedlak and Carol Bruce, “Youth's Characteristics and Backgrounds: Findings from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement,”
Juvenile Justice Bulletin
, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, December 2010,
www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227730.pdf
.

  
53
  
Twenty-six percent of those surveyed were locked up on assault charges
: Ibid., p. 4.

  
53
  
Only 11 percent of youth in custody
: Even this number may be misleading, as 55 percent of those surveyed said they were with a group when they committed their offense, and young people often do not understand that, for instance, by driving a robbery victim to an ATM they could be charged with kidnapping, or that if they are present while someone they are with uses a gun, whether or not they know the gun is there or anticipate its use, they also will be held responsible for whatever harm results.

  
54
  
the great majority of those confined as juveniles pose little to no danger to the public
: Richard A. Mendel,
No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration
(Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011), p. 13,
www.aecf.org/~/media/Pubs/Topics/Juvenile%20Justice/Detention%20Reform/NoPlaceForKids/JJ_NoPlaceForKids_Full.pdf
. See also Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, “Children's Policy Agenda: Policy Brief, 2010.”