If we want to assure ourselves of a bountiful harvest of future criminals, youth prisons are doing a bang-up job. According to research, Juvenile Correction Facilities actually promote criminal and antisocial behavior, and radically increase the probability of a young offender’s continued dealings with the corrections system. The National Youth Justice Alliance puts recidivism of youth offenders at just under 75 percent, meaning we can expect most of them to be in an adult prison one day.

Is this what we want?

A recent book-length report, Deviant Peer Influences in Intervention and Public Policy for Youth, by Kenneth A. Dodge, Thomas J. Dishion, and Jennifer E. Lansford, goes into exhaustive detail on the effects of sequestering criminally bad kids with one another in youth prisons.

Bottom line: the kids with deviant behavior get worse. But there are alternatives to prison that are better for the kid and the community. Use alternatives whenever possible.

The problem with youth prisons is twofold. First, corralling deviant youth in one place creates a “contagion effect,” like passing around a flu among co-workers. In an abstract for Social Policy Report, the report’s authors say, “The problem is well known ... vulnerable adolescents risk becoming more deviant through association with deviant peers and peer groups. Deviant peer influences are among the most potent factors in the development of antisocial behavior.”

In prison, offenders strut their bravado, brag about their bad deeds, and teach willing listeners the tricks of the trade. One of the research studies concluded “...all-deviant peer groups increased their rate of antisocial behavior, whereas high-risk boys assigned to groups with nondeviant peers decreased their antisocial behavior.” This seems like a “well, duh,” but research gives the conclusion standing.

Furthermore, prison is an unreal environment, intentionally divorced from the deviant’s family of origin, neighborhood and community. While in prison, many offenders learn to follow the rules to earn privileges and avoid trouble. But the moment they’re out, they’re right back with whatever chaos nurtured their criminal impulses in the first place.

So the second problem is that youth prisons do nothing to improve the conditions in the child’s “natural ecology.” While the kid was away, the home and community were probably relieved to be free of her nasty temper and larcenous ways. But when her sentence is up — after less than a year, on average — she’s back again, sporting a more defiant attitude, toughened by the ridicule and aggression of her prison peers. To boot, she’s acquired a few new bad habits and skills.

Imprisoning a youth does not teach the family how to cope with the kid. Prison does nothing to help communities whose social norms, however inadvertently, encourage or tolerate deviant behavior. The community couldn’t handle the child in the first place, and now he’s back and worse. It’s not surprising if his family or neighborhood — and certainly his school — want him and his ‘tude gone again, and soon. It’s a setup for the kid to fail.

The juvenile justice system has no responsibility for what happens to the kid, the home or community once that kid is returned. Justice is done when the offender has been adequately punished, in the eyes of the law. Juvenile justice doesn’t care that it makes bad situations worse.

Consider for a moment just two of the existing, research-backed alternatives to incarceration. One that is gaining favor in a few forward-looking U.S. cities is “family conferencing.” According to the Juvenile Justice Bulletin (February 2001), New Zealand disposes of all but the most violent juvenile crimes with conferencing.

This practice brings together the immediate community of both the victim and the perpetrator. A court-appointed adjudicator guides a conversation designed to help the offender understand the effects of his crime and to help both families work out appropriate restitution.

If this does not seem adequately punishing to you, imagine getting hauled on the carpet with your mother and her sisters, say, to face the victim and his people, and then have to hash out jointly the consequences for your deeds. Deviants do not soon forget or repeat dragging their families into a harsh, semipublic light. And even after a deal is reached, the offender still must suffer the negotiated consequences.

Other alternatives send clinicians to the offenders’ homes and wherever they hang out in the community.

For instance, Multi-System Therapy (MST) is famous for having copious research studies and data that demonstrate its success specifically with youth offenders. MST and similar programs focus much attention on teaching the family and community how to discipline, control and care for the offender effectively. Stressed communities really could use this sort of help.

When necessary, clinicians get involved in alleviating family dysfunction, assisting with jobs, training, housing, substance abuse, mental health. Again, imagine being the one who forfeited your family’s privacy, inviting in representatives of the state authorized to ask Dad questions about his substance use, employment plans or friends. The offender’s wings are clipped right there in the home, where parents will learn how to keep them clipped.

Home-based responses, such as MST, work best early on in a kid’s life, when he’s stolen his first car, not his 10th. Better yet, juvenile justice should not wait until a kid is a full-blown thief, but send an MST team, or similar, to get to the bottom of his chronic truancy when he’s only in middle school, and thereby skip the stolen cars altogether.

Granted, chronically violent kids probably cannot be safely maintained in the community. They are a small group, and they will need some sort of locked facility. But we, the larger community, need to take ownership of the fact that we let them become what they are. These are kids we’re talking about — legally and developmentally. They are still growing, and their mentally ill behavior is our communal responsibility.

The Deviant Peer Influences report notes: “Of the $5 billion spent on juvenile courts each year, about 93 percent, or $4.65 billion, is spent on programs that aggregate deviant youth [prisons and treatment centers] ... The remaining 7 percent is spent on parole, probation, and home-based services...,” such as MST. MST costs between $15,000 to $36,000 a year, as compared with $60,000 to $104,000 for a year in a youth facility. MST has better outcomes, including much lower recidivism. You do the math.

Why not dismantle the youth prison system, and use the resources to get desperately-needed help to the families and communities where crime is born and nurtured?

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch, Education and Employment, Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.