Commentary: We could do a lot more to keep young people away from the justice system

Updated August 25, 2024

Robin Campbell

The Baltimore Sun

A 16-year-old talks to a Sun photographer while under house arrest in his Columbia home. FILE (Sun staff)

Everyone agrees that public safety and the well-being of young people are important. Armstrong Williams recently used his column to share his vision for pursuing these outcomes (“We need to rebalance juvenile justice,” Aug. 3). I am grateful to the Sun for this opportunity to offer a different perspective.

Williams’ piece betrays a deep pessimism about what causes young people to break the law and our ability to rehabilitate those who become involved in the juvenile justice system. Yet, among experts who study these matters, there is consensus not only about the risk factors associated with youth crime but also about what works to get kids back on track. What is missing only is the political will to act on this knowledge.

This absence of will can be traced partly to sensationalized misinformation. The assertion in Williams’ column that “juvenile crime has skyrocketed” since the passage of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act in 2022 is an example. Williams’ claim is based upon data from the city’s top prosecutor showing a 300 percent increase since 2022 in the number of Baltimore youths charged with a criminal offense.

Technically, this number may be accurate. From January through June of 2024, the reported data shows 590 kids were charged with breaking the law compared to just 191 kids during the same months of 2022. The number of kids charged specifically with automobile theft rose from 82 to 212, and the number of kids accused of robbery jumped from 17 to 246.

However, even a moment’s reflection might prompt one to wonder. In a city with nearly 600,000 residents, is just 17 kids charged with robbery over half a year even possible?

The answer is “yes” only if that year was 2022, when we were deep in the pandemic—when hundreds of thousands of Americans were still dying COVID-related deaths and social distancing was still considered potentially lifesaving.

Setting the baseline a bit earlier, before the pandemic, offers a different picture. Nearly twice as many minors were arrested in 2019 compared to 2023 (1608 compared to 896), reported Baltimore police data show. Currently, youth crime is comparatively low in this timeframe, as measured by arrests.

In short, the state’s attorney has used an exceptionally low point in public activity as a baseline to give a misleading impression of an extreme increase in youth crime.

By either measure, of course, youth offending is too high. That’s why we celebrate initiatives like the Department of Youth Justice’s new Thrive Academy, which shows great promise for reducing gun violence among our city’s highest-risk youth by pairing them with credible life coaches.

The federal government’s top agency focused on youth crime, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), has set forth its vision for improving youth safety.  It calls, first, for treating kids like kids. Notwithstanding prodigies like Mozart and John Stuart Mill, most young people’s developing brains are very different from those of adults, and we should treat kids accordingly. Second, whenever possible, we ought to provide services to system-involved youth in their communities and include families in treatment. This is because incarceration—especially for longer periods and in adult facilities—increases young people’s risks of recidivism and personal harm, making everybody less safe. Third, we should be working to remove the collateral consequences—including barriers to education, housing, employment, and military service—that keep kids involved in the system from achieving success.

We could also be doing a lot more to keep young people away from the justice system to begin with. If, for example, our government systems coordinated better to address the too-common challenges facing kids living in poverty, such as food and housing insecurity, untreated behavioral health conditions, and substandard education, far fewer youth would be encountering the justice system in the first place.

By focusing attention on the challenges of youth crime and victimization, Williams is reminding us that we can hold elected and government officials accountable for the information they share and the services they promise. But this need not be a story of misinformation, despair, and retribution. If we are serious about safety and committed to prevention and effective responses, it can be a story instead of hope. For the sake of all of our children—in Baltimore and across Maryland, as well as our collective safety, let us choose hope.

— Robin Campbell, Baltimore

The writer is a member of the Maryland Youth Justice Coalition.