In each of the last five years, more than 90,000 youth were incarcerated in adult jails and prisons in the U.S. Although the practice of incarcerating youth as adults has become increasingly common in the U.S., the rest of the world views the practice as a human rights violation.
On April 5th, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a blistering critique of the United States that should be a wake-up call for Michigan, which is one of the top ten offenders in terms of youth in adult prisons. The IACHR is an autonomous body of the Organization of American States which promotes respect for human rights in the Western Hemisphere.
At a March IACHR hearing on the human rights of youth in adult prisons, we presented the testimony of a Michigan youth who had been assaulted in prison and other evidence of human rights abuses in Michigan facilities collected by the ACLU of Michigan Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative and the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic (IWHR) at the City University of New York School of Law.
The IACHR expressed “deep concern” over the practice – in Michigan and across the United States – of incarcerating youth in adult facilities and issued a statement urging the United States “to identify and urgently implement a federal mechanism to identify anyone under the age of 18 as a child, to keep them from being tried as adults or incarcerated alongside adults.”
A particular problem in Michigan
The practice of incarcerating youth in adult prisons has been widely denounced because it places youth at higher risk of rape, assault, and suicide. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance reports that youth in adult prisons are eight times as likely to be victims of sexual assault.
Melodee Hanes, a representative of the Department of Justice, testified to the IACHR that, “We have learned that kids who go into the adult system have a higher rate of recidivism. Children [… at] all costs should be not sent into the adult system.”
To illustrate the harm of holding children in adult facilities, we submitted statements from 14 human rights and civil liberties organizations, as well as scholars and other experts.
Additionally, we presented national statistics and studies, and survey data and interviews with youth in adult prisons in Michigan.
Our research found that:
- More than three-quarters of youth in Michigan prisons had been held in solitary confinement and more than one-third were held there for 30 days or more.
- Many were not in educational classes either because of wait-lists, because they were denied access as punishment for an infraction, or because the facilities did not offer any education beyond a GED.
- Young people reported that they had to pay for medical care and would forego treatment for injuries because they could not afford it.
- Young people were incarcerated hundreds of miles from home and struggled to keep in contact with their families.
After receiving this evidence at the IACHR hearing, Commissioner Rodrigo Escobar Gil said, “It’s absolutely impermissible that well into the 21st century States still have correctional facilities where youth and adults live together, because this lends itself to one of the most serious violations of human rights.”
IACHR Commissioner Felipe González stressed that “this is a basic and urgent problem” and “incremental” change is insufficient.
We couldn’t agree more.
Unless things change, the world will continue to watch and criticize. This November, the U.N. Human Rights Committee has indicated it will include the issue of kids in the adult criminal justice system in its upcoming review of U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a human rights treaty that the United States has ratified.
In its harsh critique this month, the IACHR emphasized that many countries in the Americas have changed their legislation to require that youth be kept out of adult facilities. The U.S. – and Michigan – should follow suit.
By Cassie Fleming and Bianca Cappellini, International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at the City University of New York School of Law
