The Youth Of Oregon Need Our Help.

Sep 16

(This brief article was written in Jan. 2019 for Pacific University in application for a grant to pay for my PhD. I won the grant but passed it up to pursue chaplaincy training instead of my PhD, one of the best decisions of my life! I enjoyed writing this article so much, and it was very well received, so I thought it would be valuable to include it for others to read as well.)

In 2003, the number of youth incarcerated in the United States was 96,531. This number should take your breath away because this is a massive amount of children! To put this into local perspective, this is six times more children than all of the kids in the Eugene 4J School District, which as of today is over 16,000 according to their website. Imagine six times the kids in Eugene all incarcerated! There is good news however, as of 2015 that number has been reduced by over 50% to 48,043. This is an unbelievable accomplishment! This is still far more kids than I want to see locked up, especially considering 73% of those incarcerated in 2015 are charged with non-violent offenses.

As a nation, we can celebrate this accomplishment as a win for the youth of America. We can say that as a national society we have reduced the number of children who require incarceration by 50% since 2003! But if you are an Oregonian, there is not much to celebrate. In fact I believe those of us in Oregon who care about justice for our youth have a major social problem on our hands.

According to the data provided by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ), we can see that Oregon incarcerated 1275 children in 2003, and the number has not budged more than 12.7% to 1113 as of 2015. So whatever is improving our national juvenile justice system on a national level is not impacting Oregon to the same degree. The youth of America are seeing major improvements in their chances to stay free, but the youth of Oregon are nearly just as likely to end up incarcerated today as they were 16 years ago.

To look at it another way, in 2003 Oregon was only responsible for 1.32% of the 96,531 children that required incarceration in the US. However 12 years later in 2015, Oregon is responsible for a whopping 2.32% of all the 48,043 children locked up in America. This is an increase of more than 177%! Ultimately, in Oregon we are locking up almost twice as many kids compared to the national average as we were in 2003.

While it is beyond the scope of this essay to identify the reasons why Oregon is so far out of balance from the rest of the nation and has been unable to achieve the same 50% falling rates of youth incarceration, I do want to consider some general ideas that contribute to this severe problem. From my experience, youth who end up in the justice system are typically just kids who need help. This is the reason they are in the system to begin with because their own system didn’t work.

What I mean is, their family or their community didn’t give them adequate support and opportunity so that they had to turn to alternatives. Most kids don’t want to steal for example, they just can't afford the things they need so they end up stealing in order to survive. Most kids don’t realize how bad of a decision they have made when they break the law until it is too late and they are in the system.

There is a brokenness in the American family that is a major factor. In 2015, 35% of all the children in the US had only one parent. In Oregon of the same year, the average was 30%. It should come at no surprise that kids in the juvenile justice system often have only one parent, who is usually struggling with their own mental health issues and/or drug addiction. I know this first hand because I was one of the many incarcerated youth of America. When I was locked up as a youth, almost every kid in there was just like me. Most of us didn’t have a father and our mother was crazy. We used to joke with half a smile that the state of Nevada was actually our father.

So what is being done to prevent the youth of America from being incarcerated? There have been many advances in public policies that have been put in place to advocate for children’s justice. For example, Oregon, among other states, has put mandatory reporters policies in place to help keep kids safe from abuse in the home by requiring public service members to report any abuse when they see it, or face punishment by law. There is no more “minding your own business” when it comes to kid’s safety. I believe this policy has likely exposed a lot of previously unreported child abuse and now authorities are able to address these matters appropriately.

There have also been major breakthroughs in mental health. If kids are able to get proper diagnosis and therapy before they fall into chronic criminal activity, they are far more likely to avoid the juvenile justice system altogether. In 2015, of the 74.5 million children in the US, 17.1 million of those children had a psychiatric disorder, according to the Child Mind Institute. I believe identifying mental health issues and treating them can keep kids from being incarcerated.

One more subtle change that is making the biggest difference is overall community support. I believe as a nation we have become more democratic and learned how to work together better. We have learned how to care for each other more as a community. Neighborhoods and cities have worked together to provide safety nets for kids who don’t have help at home. Today for example, almost any kid has the opportunity to play sports because if they can't afford it the community has scholarships available. Overall, there is a stronger community network in place in most growing cities that is supporting a lot of the kids who previously fell through the cracks.

Given the opportunity, I will provide the youth of my community with an alternative to incarceration. I would love to be able to help kids who lack that family support by giving them the tools to excel in life. When I can, I will teach them how to conquer their fears and overcome their obstacles. I will offer guidance to the kids who have lost their way, and stand with them against oppression. I plan to do whatever it takes to show them that against all odds true happiness is attainable for us all.

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