Stop throwing our kids in juvenile detention

Some folks in the state of Washington are wondering if Becca’s Law might be doing more harm than good and I tend to think it is.

If you’re not familiar, Becca’s Law essentially lets judges in Washington put certain kids in juvenile detention if they skip school, if they break curfew, or if they’re running away from home.

In other words, they’re non-criminal offenses, but things that certain kids do that might foreshadow worse behavior. In other words, they’d be doing this for the kid’s own good or to teach them a lesson.

The lesson is that if you skip school a bunch of times, we’ll punish you with a night in detention and you’ll be scared straight.

But it seems like the state might be abusing this because we find we’re #1 in the country when it comes to putting kids in juvie. We’re doing it more than twice that of the second highest state that does this.

The last year we have data for this shows judges using this option over 2,700 times. That’s insane to me.

Folks are wondering if this is working; some saying it flat out doesn’t.

“They are put in with other kids who are more delinquent than they are,” said George Yeannakis, special counsel for the Seattle-based youth advocacy group TeamChild. “There’s no difference (in how they are treated) — it’s the same judge, the same court, the same detention facility. A lot of kids will see themselves as part of that system.”

And then you have the folks saying, this is, in fact, deterring kids.

Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam and the original Senate sponsor of the Becca Bill, said that without the threat of detention, judges “would have no leverage” to make kids follow court orders to attend school or come home at night.

“Becca was put together to keep kids from getting hurt — to keep kids from getting into the criminal justice system,” Hargrove said. “It was to protect the kids, not to punish them.”

The truth is, you can’t prove this thing necessarily works because if it did work, it would mean kids are stopping themselves from the bad behavior, before it even gets to the judge. They’re scared of the consequence of going to juvie.

You can’t prove that someone chose not to do something as a result of this bill.

You can look at the kids going through the system and see if their behavior changed and frankly, you’ll probably get mixed results.

So I think you have to use your gut to see if this law is a good idea and my gut says it’s not.

Now, I take this position not as a parent, but as someone who remembers what it’s like being a kid. I remember preferring people actually treat me like my age and talk to me about what I did wrong, rather than simply punish me and move on.

Now, I was a good kid, for the most part, with normal issues.

The kids we’re talking about are more troubled and it seems remarkably lazy to me to just throw some kid in juvie rather than getting them the help they need, the counseling they need, and the support they need. The love they need.

There’s this fantastic project happening at Big Picture High School in Burien with the worst possible name: restorative justice.

It sounds like a crazy social justice program that means nothing, but it actually works and I love the idea.

After four years of adopting this approach, suspensions dropped from 700 one year to just 8.

It works pretty simply. When a kid breaks a rule, they’re allowed to participate in this program. It’s totally voluntary and if they agree, they go through an in-depth counseling session where they’re asked why they’re misbehaving. They try to figure out the root cause.

Maybe it’s because they need attention that they’re not getting at home.

Maybe they think no one cares.

Maybe they’re being influenced by bad kids. Whatever it is, you work with them to figure out the why and then you bring together what’s called a “circle of allies.”

The allies are basically friends, teachers, their pastor, and anyone who they like and trust who can keep these kids accountable. The kid agrees to meet with them, talk with them, and check in with them to make sure they’re on the right path.

And a lot of times, because this can be touchy-feely, it’s rejected by the student. But they end up agreeing and it actually works. They end up getting a lot out of it.

I know a lot of people have a hard-line approach to this, but I think it’s a smart move for our area schools.