Commentary
Page 12
Street Roots • April 1-7, 2016
Misguided measures revisited: Charging youths as adults
would later succeed in the community - in
fact, the opposite was more likely, given the
life-long impact of an adult conviction.
n 2011, Partnership for Safety and Justice
In 2016, the news is not all bad. During the
and the Campaign for Youth Justice
five years since we released “Misguided
published “Misguided Measures.” We
Measures” and the two decades since
examined Oregon’s Ballot Measure 11 (1994)
Measure 11 passed, persistent efforts by
and how, by
government
officials and advocates have
exposing youth
eliminated
significant
harms caused by the
to the adult
ballot initiative. Release of the first installment
criminal justice
of our youth justice update, “Misguided
system and
Measures Revisited: Part 1 - Keeping Youth
extreme
Out of Jails,” recounts Oregon’s efforts to
mandatory
keep young people safe after they have been
minimum
charged as adults - specifically, ending the
sentences, it has
practice of confining youth in adult jails.
caused avoidable
While this initial update recognizes
harm and
significant
progress, the two remaining
degraded our system of justice. Today, this
segments of our new report will document
more than 20-year experiment with a “get
on-going challenges faced by Oregon’s youth
tough” response to crime continues to have
justice system. The three briefs of this series,
devastating consequences for young people,
together, will examine:
families, and communities, while doing little
1. The successful effort to keep minors out
to help crime victims or increase long-term
of adult jails.
public safety.
2. The ongoing and devastating impact of
How do youth end up in Oregon’s adult
Measure
11 on young people and its
justice system?
disproportionate impact on youth of color.
In Oregon, the main driver of youth into
3. The need to address the long-term
the adult criminal justice system is Ballot
Andy Ko is the
consequences of adult criminal convictions for
Measure 11 (1994). Measure 11 required that
executive director o f the
youth.
any person age 15 or older charged with a
Partnership for Safety
Part 1 of our update concludes with two
specified felony, ranging from second-degree
and Justice, a
assault to aggravated murder, be automatically concrete policy recommendations aimed at
statewide, nonprofit
improving both the outcomes for justice-
advocacy organization tried in adult criminal court. This one-size-fits-
dedicated, to m a k in g
^att xutc pu sU ed ju d ges, w h o are e x p e c te d to b e
involved youth and ensuring the safety of all
Oregons approach to' : impartial, out of the decision-making process
Oregonians. These are practical solutions that
crime and public safety and handed all discretion over to prosecutors,
can be implemented immediately - and
more effective and just.
whose job it is to get a conviction. Under
should, given what we know today about
Measure 11, prosecutors decide which
adolescent development and the prevention of
teenagers will be treated as adults and which
future criminality.
will not, simply by charging them differently.
In our original report, we described a range
Recommendations
of harms caused by Measure 11, from its
1. Enact statewide legislation to ensure that
disproportionate impact on young people of
youth facing adult criminal charges never see
color to the danger faced by teenagers in
the inside of an adult jail cell. State lawmakers
counties where they were still being held in
should enact legislation that requires counties
adult jails. We also described what Measure
to place youth in juvenile detention when
11 had not done. Statistically, it had not made
pretrial confinement is unavoidable. While
Oregonians safer, and it had not increased the
most counties no longer detain youth in adult
likelihood that minors convicted as adults
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jails, informal local policies can easily shift
based on fiscal pressures, changes in the
political climate, and a host of other factors.
State legislation will ensure the consistent
treatment of youth across Oregon.
2. Expand supervised release, so that
certain youth who are charged as adults can
be managed in the community as their cases
move through the court system. When youth
can be maintained under supervision in the
community, in a safe and stable environment
where they pose no danger to victims or the
general public, outcomes are usually better for
the young person, their families and their
communities. Eliminating pretrial detention is
also less costly for taxpayers and can promote
greater public safety in the long-run, as the .
young person reaches adulthood.
The more long-term concern that must be
addressed is the underlying destructive policy
of charging young people as adults. Teenagers
are different from fully developed adults.
That’s established science. Even among
people who reject science, most know a
teenager and would have to agree that young
people are different. The proof is even in
language: How many thousands of times a day
do teenagers around the world hear, “Oh,
grow up!”
Even harder to deny is that, deep down,
every adult knows that he or she is a very
different person from her or his adolescent
self.
And that is the problem: Measure I l ’s
requirement that certain 15-, 16-' and' 17-year-
olds face mandatory minimum sentences of 5
years and 10 months up to 25 years makes
very little sense in terms of what we know
about the judgement and emotional makeup of
teenagers - and even less sense still given the
cost of incarceration, impact on the young
person’s future functioning in society and long
term public safety. The challenge in reforming
Measure 11, as it applies to young people, is
to bring some sense to how we respond to
crimes committed by youth - to hold these
young people appropriately accountable, while
not condemning them for what they are not:
adults.