Kansas’ youth need investment and community support — not detention

As COVID-19 cases continue to soar, young people feel more isolated than ever. With interruptions to school, limited access to friends and family, and a general lack of stability and normalcy, young people are deeply impacted by this crisis. Amid all of this, law enforcement is far more interested in locking young people up in harmful facilities than investing in the opportunities for support and care they need. It’s critical we recognize all young people deserve support and care.

The pandemic has taught us our youth justice system is not designed to serve our young people. Not only is placing young people behind bars ineffective, it also has long-lasting, harmful effects. Prior to youth justice reforms, Kansas’ punitive approach to youth justice focused on dehumanizing young people and portraying incarcerated youth as a threat to our communities.

Despite improvements to youth justice in Kansas, the Wichita Police Department continues to go so far as labeling children as “super criminals.” Instead of perpetuating racist and harmful narratives around incarcerated youth, we need to uplift youth voices and give them the tools they need to succeed, especially during the pandemic.

In the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Center (KJCC), COVID-19 has infected 66 staff members and 19 young people, yet young people there today remain more vulnerable than ever to the deadly threat of the virus. To make matters worse, safety precautions around COVID-19 have limited visitation access for friends and family of incarcerated youth, and lockdowns have forced young people to languish in solitary confinement. Kansas must immediately halt all new admissions to youth facilities and close KJCC.

Incarcerated youth have long endured inhumane conditions in KJCC, and COVID-19 has only exacerbated these conditions. When young people are placed behind bars, they are removed from their own communities and support systems. Additionally, incarcerated youth are at high risk of physical and sexual abuse, and many leave facilities with unimaginable trauma.

Just as COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color, systematic racism and bias in the youth justice system places young people of color behind bars at much higher rates. In Kansas, Black youth are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth. Youth prisons also come at an incredible cost to the taxpayer. It costs $113,000 a year in Kansas to incarcerate one young person.

Think of how far that money could go if it were invested in community supports.

The key to building a system that centers the needs of our young people and creates safe and healthy communities is to invest in our youth, not lock them up. Kansas has the funds to invest in community and neighborhood-based solutions that give our youth the opportunities they need to be successful, but Kansas officials have failed to adequately deploy these funds. Instead of investing in a system that has only proven to traumatize young people, it’s past time the state uses its resources to fund community-based supports such as housing, education and mental wellness — all of which we know are effective.

No child is irredeemable — we need a system that supports youth, not punishes them. Every day that our communities come together to work to create more positive supports for youth, we take a step in the right direction.

This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 4:54 AM.