This story is part of Kids Incarcerated, a Teen Vogue series on youth incarceration in the United States for National Youth Justice Awareness Month. In this op-ed, musician and activist John Legend explains the school-to-prison pipeline and how you can help break it.
Over the past two years, through my FREEAMERICA initiative, I have traveled the country meeting with and learning from those impacted by the criminal justice system. I have met with many youth — youth who may look like you, your loved ones, or classmates — who are being channeled into what we’ve taken to calling the “school-to-prison pipeline.” If these boys and girls act out in school — even in minor ways that might once have meant nothing more than giving an apology or having a conversation with the principal — they may find themselves down at a police station talking to the cops. They may end up with a record. They may end up ripped away from their families and their communities, shoved into a system that keeps well over 2 million people locked in cages and disenfranchises nearly 6 million people.
These numbers have individuals and families and real stories behind them. Visiting a juvenile center a couple years ago, I met a 15-year-old girl who’d been shuttled from the principal’s office to jail for fighting in the schoolyard. I encountered a young man who, at 10 years old, was accused of bringing narcotics to school and put in handcuffs in front of his classmates and teachers, an experience that forever changed how he was seen and treated at school.
Right now, Congress is poised to update a bill that will address youth incarceration. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) is our nation’s preeminent law protecting young people in the system. Originally signed into law in 1974, the JJDPA provides funding for states to prevent delinquency in America, to reduce racial and ethnic disparities for youth of color, to keep youth out of adult jails, and to keep status offenders, including truants and runaways, out of jail. Last revised well over a decade ago, this critical law is overdue for an update to close loopholes that put more youth behind bars, to better protect incarcerated youth, and to give communities control over how they use federal crime-prevention dollars. Congress will grapple with many significant issues between now and the end of the year, and the reauthorization of the JJDPA should be a top priority among them.
The House and Senate have each passed versions of the bill, and all that is needed now is to resolve the differences between them. Of course, how the differences are resolved matters a great deal. The House-passed version of the bill includes two key provisions that Congress should be certain to include. First, Congress should close the loophole that currently allows states to lock up children who are arrested for status offenses — like skipping school, breaking curfew, and running away from home. Known as the Valid Court Order (VCO) exception, this loophole is particularly harmful to girls.
Through my work with FREEAMERICA, I have met with incarcerated girls in a juvenile detention center in Los Angeles; the women’s wing of a jail in Austin, Texas; and a women’s prison outside Seattle. While each individual had her own unique story to tell, collectively it was clear that women are routinely arrested and detained for behaviors stemming from sexual violence and trauma that have gone untreated. Girls are often sexually abused in foster care or group homes and will run away to protect themselves from further abuse. A girl in this situation should not be incarcerated and retraumatized, but because of the VCO exception, many states lock them up. Closing this loophole would help reduce the number of young people entering the juvenile justice system, youth who need treatment and support.
After studying the issue for more than a decade, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges supports closing this exception. The sole opponent to closing the VCO exception has been Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK), who has said that in the U.S., "if anything, we have an underincarceration problem" — even though this is the most incarcerated country in the world by far!
Regarding the second crucial provision: Congress should also update a portion of the JJDPA to incentivize effective violence-prevention programs. Violence-prevention programming is already a key component of the JJDPA — it allows states that are in compliance with the law to apply for local prevention dollars to invest in programs such as mental health services, substance abuse prevention, and recreational services. The House version of the bill supports and empowers local communities to use federal prevention dollars to build a full continuum of care, using evidence-based responses to specific crime problems in their communities. For example, if a locality states that it does not have an alternative to detention to support status offenders, localities could apply for prevention grants to open safe havens or offer remedial education courses.
Over the summer, I joined a panel of community leaders and experts for a conversation with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on the criminal justice system in Chicago. “Tough on crime” proponents like Attorney General Jeff Sessions often use the high homicide rates of cities like Chicago to justify failed punitive policies, but Chicago is proof that we cannot arrest and jail our way out of violence, especially when it comes to youth. When Illinois instituted comprehensive reforms over the past several years to build age-appropriate responses to crime, day-reporting centers, and community-based mental health services for youth in cities including Chicago, the state incarcerated 44% fewer youth, reserving incarceration only for those who were a public safety threat. If Congress is serious about helping the communities most plagued by violence, it will preserve the violence-prevention approach in the House bill.
It is our responsibility to demand an end to the criminalization of young people in this country. To achieve this we will need victories in legislatures across the U.S. Thanks to the hard work of lawmakers and their staffs within the House and Senate, the JJDPA reauthorization is closer to passage than it has been for a decade. It is up to us to contact our elected officials and make sure that the JJDPA is a priority before the end of 2017. In this era of partisan gridlock, this is a bill we can, and should, get behind.
Related: Why Young Girls Die Behind Bars
I Was a Teen Behind Bars — Here's How I Survived the System
Youth Incarceration in the United States, by the Numbers
Why Some Colleges Can't Ask About Students' Criminal History Anymore
I'm on Probation and It's Like Another Form of Incarceration
Why Disabled Youth Are More at Risk of Being Incarcerated
