“D.C. Juvenile Injustices,” Washington Post editorial, Oct. 12, 1991
The 32-year-old editorial, written during my service with The Post’s Editorial Board, observed that a period of violence was costing the city more than the lives of slain youths. “The daily shootings and killings are taking the life out of this city, leaving behind a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in besieged neighborhoods. Little wonder then that despair is mounting as fast as the death toll — and escalation of both must be stopped.”
The editorial was prompted by rising juvenile homicide arrests. But it was also sparked by a far-reaching measure before the D.C. Council aimed at youth violence. The bill’s sponsor, council member William Lightfoot (I-At Large), believed that youths of the day had no fear of being apprehended or thought that the juvenile justice system was in no way consequential to their future or behavior.
Lightfoot’s proposal sought to tighten penalties for gun offenses and increase maximum sentences for youths from two years to 10 years. He proposed toughening pretrial detention rules and adding time for breaking out of juvenile facilities or assaulting staff.
Those proposals were wide of the mark, in the Editorial Board’s view. We thought they came down too hard on the side of punishment and retribution, rather than the constructive goal of rehabilitation. “A serious mistake,” said the board. And it offered this 1991 perspective on the problem: “The current juvenile justice system is woefully ineffective. It fails to treat youthful offenders as if they are corrigible, educable or redeemable. And as several court decrees have underscored, the present system does more harm than good. [The Lightfoot] measures will not bring about a needed reform of the juvenile justice process.” The editorial called for the mayor, council and residents to produce a youth corrections and rehabilitation program “that reclaims rather than condemns.”
In the first nine months of this year, there were more than 450 arrests of juveniles on charges of robbery, including carjacking, murder or assault with a dangerous weapon — that’s 10 percent more than in all of 2022, according to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). A third of all carjacking arrests are attributed to juveniles. And victims?
Through October, 97 juveniles suffered gunshot wounds, including 15 who died — a 9 percent increase from the same time last year, Bowser said. It makes little difference if the alleged offenders are under court supervision. Over a recent five-week span, five youths under court electronic monitoring (meaning they were wearing ankle bracelets) were killed. November’s juvenile arrests and homicide totals are not in, but daily reporting suggests there has been no slackening. Bullets keep flying; young bodies keep falling.
Then and now, you might ask?
“D.C. Juvenile Injustices” was written when the Oak Hill Youth Center was one of the city’s secure facilities for youths. I went there for the first time in 1991 with the city’s director of the Department of Human Services, Vincent C. Gray, shortly after his appointment by then-Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly. Oak Hill was an awful, critically crowded place, as was the city’s aging and deteriorating Cedar Knoll Youth Center. Both facilities were rife with violence and bereft of anything close to education and rehabilitation.
It took a lawsuit to put both facilities out of their misery.
The court suit has been settled, and court oversight supervision has ended. There are secure detention facilities for youths called New Beginnings and the Youth Services Center. Been there, seen them, too.
Last month, Bowser declared a state of emergency allowing the city to take urgent action to renovate and expand the Youth Services Center and come up with better programs — especially rehabilitative, therapeutic and trauma-informed ones — for youths detained there, in New Beginnings and at other city facilities.
Because the city was found failing, by way of a D.C. Council member’s surprise inspection, and a D.C. Superior Court judge’s finding, to do what it professed to be doing: keeping youths in the least restrictive safe and secure environment and focusing on their developmental needs. With crowded, understaffed, violence-prone detention facilities, the District has been failing miserably.
Thirty-two years ago, and now?
City officials knew then, and they know now, that they must delve into the breathtaking, depressing data to draw insight into the violent behavior that is taking away lives and hopes. Root causes? Can’t deal with jargon.
But look at juvenile-justice-involved youths and check out their experiences in school, how and where they live, and what’s it like in their homes and surrounding neighborhoods. Listen to the mental burdens they bear — problems they don’t even know they have. Think about teenage girls and boys becoming mothers and fathers before growing up themselves.
Look closely, and you will see children struggling with issues unknown to most adults dwelling comfortably with families in other parts of town.
But taking on that responsibility to fix what’s broken in their young lives, including their families, through early, professional intervention is — time- and resource-wise — more than public leaders seem able or willing to do. And so they try to get by with hand-wringing and shopworn, human-development think-tank rhetoric, all signifying nothing. “Let’s have a conversation about … best practices,” etc.
October 1991 and now? Not much changes.
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