The Right to Be Young: Entering Adulthood in American Jails

Abstract

Young people ages 18 to 24 make up 10 percent of the U.S. population, yet account for 30 percent of all arrests (Schiraldi, Western, & Bradner, 2015). The representation of these emerging adults in the adult criminal justice system is disproportionate to their representation in society, and the disparity is even more severe among young people of color. In a country with severe over-incarceration, these trends call into question whether young adults should be treated the same as older adults in the system. New learning in neuroscience and psychology has advanced our understanding of emerging adulthood as a distinct developmental stage in which the human brain is still developing, and which is distinct from both adolescence and mature adulthood. A public debate has emerged as to whether people in this age group should be considered adults at all, and how to limit the life-damaging impacts of receiving an adult criminal conviction or serving time in adult facilities at this age. Young people who have been jailed, together with practitioners who work with young people in courts and jails, have largely been excluded from this debate, yet they have unique and powerful knowledge of the injustices of jails. In this capstone, I argue that the grounded knowledge of practitioners and jailed young people can help to develop a fairer and more effective approach to young adult justice. In my doctoral program in Education Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I spent a year as a Doctoral Resident at the MacArthur Foundation, where I was charged with developing strategy that could help reduce the number of young adults, aged 18 to 24, in adult jails. I analyze the research and social shifts affecting this issue, and review my strategic project at the Foundation, including convenings of practitioners and policymakers and focus groups conducted with young African American men who have been jailed in Cook County, Illinois. Their voices and stories are featured, as they should play a key role in any decisions that impact their lives. I suggest initial considerations for reform, including what policy changes stakeholders should champion for emerging adults within the criminal system. The capstone provokes a new set of questions to consider for people across the country who work in courts, jails, and prisons—as well as for the communities they intend to protect—as they evaluate the effectiveness of holding young people in adult jails. Further, the capstone offers a critical examination of the role that racism plays in debates about criminal justice reform for this population of young people.