If 18-year-old Lamont Davis' trial and sentencing on attempted-murder charges are not flashing signs for juvenile justice reform, it is difficult to see what would be.
Mr. Davis was convicted of a terrible shooting that badly injured 5-year-old Raven Wyatt. But the two life sentences plus 30 years he received, foreclosing any possible second chance, would shock those who founded the first juvenile courts a century ago. The original juvenile courts, initially established in Chicago in 1899 and later throughout the United States, placed rehabilitation ahead of punishment. Not surprisingly, that approach almost completely eliminated recidivism.
Mr. Davis, on the other hand, is getting far more punishment and far less education and therapy than the framers of the pioneering juvenile courts could have imagined. Judge Gale Rasin stipulated that Mr. Davis could complete his high school credits in custody. That sounds future-focused, right? It's a positive step, except for one thing: The rehabilitation appears to stop there.
What should Mr. Davis do with that education if he never gets out of prison? How will he use that knowledge to contribute to a world that he will never again see? To redeem himself, Mr. Davis will need far more than a high school diploma and a life sentence.
Unfortunately, Mr. Davis' case is not unique, and neither is Judge Rasin's response. The once-therapeutic quality of the juvenile court has crumbled. Today's more punitive system devotes exorbitant sums of money to incarceration, which is far less effective than treatment and education in producing long-term benefits to the young offenders and to society.
The future of Mr. Davis and all juvenile offenders hinges on a critical choice — to punish them as adult criminals or to rehabilitate them to honor the caretaking function that once defined the juvenile court. However, the trend toward detention continues in Baltimore. The proposed $100 million jail for juveniles repudiates a century of juvenile court history and practice.
Deciding whether to spend a nine-figure sum on a jail is a referendum on the bedrock principles underpinning juvenile courts. All of society, whether motivated by compassion, concern for public safety, or fiscal responsibility, will find those priorities achieved by treating young offenders as the 1899 model intended.
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, a public-private partnership, advocates detention only as a last resort. In jurisdictions adopting its protocol, detention center populations declined 52 percent, and juvenile arrests dropped 45 percent.
The juvenile system's financial advantages should impress even those requiring more proof than the vastly reduced recidivism. Every dollar spent on rehabilitative alternatives reduces taxpayers' costs by $8, compared with only $2 saved per dollar for incarceration.
As a family and divorce mediator and teen advocate, I have mentored and taught many troubled teens, some jailed for serious offenses. Keeping delinquents in the community while being rehabilitated prepares them to respect the society they had once harmed. Building a secure society is incompatible with getting even because being safer is better than feeling safer. The public is not served by a photo-op of handcuffed teens being hauled off for a lengthy prison term with no effort to ready them for release.
Those who support juvenile jails might change their opinion if they understood that rehabilitation and treatment cost four to 10 times less than incarceration and are six times more effective at keeping offenders from committing another crime.
Treating Mr. Davis according to the original juvenile court model would have honored history, conserved the public purse and protected the community. Vengeance has no place in juvenile justice
The officials who would construct a new jail and the judges who would send juvenile offenders there must recognize their error, which the framers of the original juvenile court would never have condoned.
Matthew M. House is a divorce and family law mediator in private practice in Portland, Oregon. His e-mail is matthew@mediatormatthew.com.