The Time is Now for CHANGE!
- Chip St. Clair
- Apr 2, 2015
- 3 min read
They say that home is where the heart is. I awaken each day with a sense of pride to be able to call Michigan my home. But not today. My heart, like our juvenile justice system, is broken. It’s broken because what is happening to our young people is inexcusable. It’s broken because Michigan is leading the pack in punitive measures for young offenders. It’s broken because we continue to punish the hopeless with more hopelessness, the suffering with more suffering. We continue to accept the Cycle of Silence.
Read Jim Lynch’s article in yesterday’s Detroit News:
Juvenile Prisoners in Michigan allege rape, abuse
It is more than provocative news, it is a call to action. Michigan is among the leaders in waiving juvenile offenders to adult court, where upon conviction they are housed with adult offenders and subjected to the daily threat of violence and rape. To understand the egregiousness of this, we need to turn our attention back to the inception of the juvenile justice system in 1899. Up until that time, most societies tried children over the age of 7 as adults, and subsequently imprisoned them with adults. Imagine an 8-year-old in a prison camp with a host of seedy characters convicted of every crime under the sun. With the emergence of the social sciences such as psychology however, folks suddenly began to realize that young adolescent minds are not cognitively developed and therefore unable to rationalize right from wrong the same way an adult mind can. Coupled with the fact that many children of the time were poor, uneducated, and victims of all sorts of abuse themselves, the perfect storm for disaster was brewing. Thus, the Child Saving Movement was born, and with it the separate juvenile justice system. Society had finally realized that juvenile offenders were wells of untapped potential -- victims of their environment -- needing guidance, nurturing, and hope.
Clearly, addressing the issue of juvenile delinquency is just as important to modern society and policymakers as it was over a century ago to those invested in the Child Saving Movement. The pendulum on the approach however has swung dramatically from one of rehabilitation to that of punitive in nature, peaking in the early/mid 1990’s. Juvenile court judges have been stripped of much of their authority to do what is in the best interest of the child, and instead that crucial decision has been left in the hands of prosecutors and legislators, resulting in fewer options available for rehabilitation and an increased likelihood of punishment.
Now for the good news. More and more experts and key stakeholders today agree that young men and women who find themselves at the mercy of the juvenile court indeed need help, and moreover are likely reacting to a host of uncontrollable, adverse circumstances in their respective environments. I know all too well because I continue to work with these kids. I continue to be amazed at their talents, inspired by their compassion, and overwhelmed by their potential. How can you turn your back on a young person who spent a lifetime suffering and reacting, who still has a dream? A young person who still believes the world can be a more beautiful place? A young person who wants to change?
I’m proud to say that my own foundation is currently working with at-risk youth by providing evidence-based creative arts programs as an alternative to detention facilities and prisons. To pursue any type of punitive options when evidence-based treatment is possible is a flagrant disassociation from the original intent and design of the juvenile justice system.
Community-based, evidence-based creative art programs are now trailblazing the path toward true reformation of deviant behavior, of character building, of strengthening the sense of self and unlocking the passion and purpose in those who will inherit the world after us. What better way to mend a hurting heart and encourage optimism for the future in those young men and women who are starving for direction than to teach life skills, to teach healthy coping skills, to teach them compassion, respect for others, and to show them that they do matter. Their reality is punitive enough, and it is finally time that the juvenile justice system goes back to its roots and acknowledges this.
Chip St. Clair
Author, The Butterfly Garden
Founder, St. Clair Butterfly Foundation
The Art of Ending the Cycle of Silence.
StClairButterflyFoundation.Org
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