White House, Supreme Court Take New Attitude Toward Young Offenders

WASHINGTON (CNS) - After a lengthy period in American history in which the prevailing attitude in criminal justice permitted more and more draconian measures in the name of law and order, the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward leniency -- entirely apropos during the church's Jubilee Year of Mercy.
While many efforts in the past have been aimed at adult criminals -- both in locking them up and, more recently, letting them go -- the most recent newsmaking has come in the realm of juvenile offenders.
On Jan. 25, President Barack Obama issued an executive order banning the use of solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons.
The number of prisoners in solitary confinement comes to about 10,000. The number of youths in solitary is much smaller; there were just 13 juveniles put in solitary between September 2014 and September 2015, according to federal officials, and youths are often there for their own protection from malevolent adult inmates. The executive order also will apply to adults in federal prisons for low-level crimes.
Obama took to the op-ed page of The Washington Post Jan. 26 to promote his action, quoting Pope Francis.
"We believe, in the words of Pope Francis, that 'every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.' We believe that when people make mistakes, they deserve the opportunity to remake their lives," Obama said. "And if we can give them the hope of a better future, and a way to get back on their feet, then we will leave our children with a country that is safer, stronger and worthy of our highest ideals."
Six months before the order, Obama had ordered the Justice Department to review the use of solitary. In a report based on the review, Attorney General Loretta Lynch recommended the use of more than 50 "guiding principles" for all prison systems.
Chief among them, as listed by the White House Jan. 25, are that "inmates should be housed in the least restrictive setting necessary to ensure their own safety, as well as the safety of staff, other inmates, and the public"; "correctional staff should develop a clear plan for returning the inmate to less restrictive conditions as promptly as possible"; and "correctional systems should always be able to clearly articulate the specific reasons for an inmate's placement and retention in restrictive housing."
The president's executive order continues a string of actions, mostly at the Supreme Court, that have made the prison experience less hellish for juveniles.
In 2012, the high court struck down mandatory life terms without parole for juveniles. On Jan. 25, the same day that Obama issued his executive order, it ruled that any juvenile sentenced to a life-without-parole sentence before the justices' 2012 decision must receive a parole hearing, declaring that their ruling from four years prior must be applied retroactively.
In 2011, in deciding the case of a 13-year-old who wasn't read his Miranda rights until after he had confessed inside his school to a theft there, the court said police must take into account the age of children when reading them their constitutional rights, adding they are not "miniature adults" and should be treated differently.
And in 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for crimes committed by minors, which freed 70 prisoners from death row.
"We're thrilled" by the executive order, said Karen Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty. "It is such an affront to the dignity of the human person," she said, citing "atrocities" that take place in solitary "and the fact that there's 100,000 people put into solitary on a regular basis."
The Catholic Mobilizing Network took a portable solitary confinement cell to last year's National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry convention and invited the teens on hand to try it out. "They were very moved," Clifton told Catholic News Service. "It was just to get their attention," she added, "and to have them start looking to the many issues that are involved with the criminal justice system and revamp it into a restorative system."
Solitary confinement is tantamount to torture, according to the Rev. Laura Markle Downton, a United Methodist minister who is director of U.S. prisons policy and programs for the National Religious Coalition Against Torture.
"We take as a guiding principle of our work the recommendations of the United Nations special rapporteur ... who said isolated confinement beyond 15 days constitutes torture, with an understanding that the human brain literally begins to change without access to meaningful human interaction," she said.
"The arbitrary use of this torture is something that must come to an end," Rev. Markle Downton added. "If we're returning them (to communities) destroyed, that's not in the best interest of anyone."
Precious Blood Father David Kelly, director of Kolbe House in Chicago, a former convent that serves as a shelter for at-risk teens in the city, runs into plenty of minors who get locked up in solitary confinement at the Cook County Jail -- which, as a municipal facility, does not come under the scope of Obama's executive order, although he wrote in the Post that he hoped the order would "hopefully serve as a model for state and local corrections systems."
"What we are doing is further harming our young people when we isolate them, even for a little bit of time," Father Kelly said. "Most of the kids who were in a juvenile detention center or in the Department of Juvenile Justice have a background of trauma, and when you give them trauma, you give them further harm. The thing we are doing with isolation is trying to get them to conform to our rules and our way of seeing things. It does just the opposite."
He added, "What we've seen is lessening the amount of time in isolation, and that can be gotten around by isolating a kid for a period of time, say an hour, then re-isolating him again." While "there is awareness -- and it's a slow-moving train -- that lessening the confinements of young people is something to look to," Father Kelly said, "it's still happening far too frequently with our young people."