Can restorative justice help balance the scales for African-American youth? - Travel Wires - MiamiHerald.com

Can restorative justice help balance the scales for African-American youth? - Travel Wires - MiamiHerald.com

"CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Darryl is a 12-year-old African American boy whose mother, Ariel, is a single parent. Ariel left high school after becoming pregnant with Darryl and has struggled to find anything but minimum wage jobs to support her family.

One day when he was out with another friend, Darryl and his friend snuck into the neighbor's house and stole a video game. The neighbors called the police.

One might conclude that the future does not bode well for Darryl. In fact, we probably would not be surprised if we were to learn later on that he was in prison. However, there is much more to his story, and much to learn from it. The police response ultimately resulted in a restorative intervention and provided Darryl with an alternative approach.

All too often, the criminal justice system offers only one solution to addressing transgressions: incarceration. A 2008 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an organization that focuses on improving public policies, found that one in 15 black men 18 years of age and older are incarcerated, compared with one in 106 white men. Even more startling, one in nine young African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars, compared to one in 30 of the general U.S. population in that age group.

There are no easy answers to the question of what to do about the disproportionate incarceration rates of young African American men. Nor is there a single solution to address the many layers of structural inequalities that perpetuate cycles of poverty and violence in their lives. We know that incarceration does not solve the problem of crime; this is evident in the fact that around 40 percent of released inmates are back in prison within three years. For some people, prison can induce change, but the reality is that once within the "system," many people tend to stay.

So how do we prevent people from entering the system? How do we respond appropriately to young people like Darryl who commit a crime? The best response is a preventative one - creating structures that help prevent youth from entering into criminal activity in the first place and provide them with support to become productive citizens. Even so, the reality is that crimes will still be committed. Consequently, we need an alternative approach to address these transgressions."


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