91172.pdf

264 10 Corrections and Prison Practices—Juvenile Forensics

In Yellen v. Ada County (1985), a 15-year-old boy was incarcerated in an adult jail for

failing to pay S73 in traffic fines. He was held for a 14-hour period during which time

he was brutally tortured by other inmates and eventually beaten to death.

Literature Review

Examining the psychological and criminological literature provides us with a better
understanding of the pervasive and severe problems encountered when incarcerating
juveniles in adult jails. According to the Annual Survey of Jails in 1989, there were
approximately 53,994 juveniles held in adult jails. Of particular concern was the
fact that many of them were status offenders (runaways, truants, and children out of
parental control). Only a small percentage of the children held in jails were charged
with violent crimes (Soler, 1988). Murray (1983) reports that of the nearly half
million children in adult jails, only 14% of them had been charged with a serious
offense such as homicide, rape, or burglary.
A lawsuit was filed against the City of Long Beach and the County of Los
Angeles in Baumgartner v. City of Long Beach (1987) when a taxpayer was outraged
that the cities incarcerated more than 4000 juveniles each year in the Long Beach
City Jail. Nearly 1000 of the children had not been charged with an offense. Instead,
these children were victims of abandonment, neglect, and abuse by their parents
and, thus, were removed from their homes. While proper placements in foster or
group homes were pending for these children, they remained locked up in jail with
adult inmates. This environment further placed these abused children in the face of
danger. Additionally, a nursery equipped with cribs and toys was located in the jail
where infants were placed until such time as proper placements could be arranged
(Soler, 1988; Steinhart, 1988). Another 1000 of the youths were status offenders,
while less than 10% were charged with violent offenses. All of the children were
kept in dark cells behind bars.
The adult jail environment is not conducive to the detainment of juveniles.
Tomasevski (1986) presents the results from a comprehensive study conducted by
the Defense for Children International in 1983, in an attempt to create awareness
about the problem of detaining children in adult facilities. Children who are held
in the adult facilities are subjected to circumstances which are direct threats to their
emotional and physical health. In order to "protect" children in such an environ-
ment, they are often separated from the adult inmate population. The result of this
action is isolation, often resembling solitary confinement. Tomasevski's (1986) inter-
national study of children in adult prisons revealed that the United States displayed
the most evidence of virtual solitary confinement.
When children are required to remain separate from adult prisoners by "sight and
sound," they are oftentimes completely isolated from human contact. Adolescents
are particularly vulnerable to depression and suicide when they are isolated and fear-
ful. Further, the correctional officers are not trained to identify the signs of depres-
sion in adolescents, and, therefore, intervention frequently does not occur in time.