What would Wyoming juvenile crime look like if status offenses were decriminalized?

by Tom Rose

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe that Wyoming should decriminalize status offenses. According to the most recent data available through both the FBI and the OJJDP, Wyoming ranks second-to-highest in the nation for both juvenile arrests and juvenile incarcerations.

Wyoming is also the only state that has not decriminalized status offenses. Decriminalization does not necessarily mean that no juveniles would ever be arrested for behaviors that are classified as status offenses. Let's face it; the behavior of the juvenile when he or she interacts with law enforcement and other authority figures plays a large part in whether he or she is arrested.

You can look at that fact negatively and consider that it is an unfair popularity contest rigged against the less socially adept juveniles. Alternatively, you can accept the fact that when a juvenile's behavior is corrected by an authority figure and they act-out rather than backing down it is the juvenile who is making it very difficult for the law enforcement officer to do anything other than arrest them.

Because Wyoming has persisted in keeping status offenses criminal we have created a reality in which a juvenile committing such behavior has broken the law. When laws have been violated, it is the job of law enforcement officers to arrest the offender.

On status offenses, if we instead permitted law enforcement officers to use their discretion, halting the behavior by issuing citations, confiscating contraband tobacco or alcohol, calling parents or otherwise acting with the authority we expect but stopping short of formalized arrest, what would Wyoming's juvenile crime look like?

As you can see from the chart above, Wyoming's juvenile status offenders make up 16.9% of the incarcerated juvenile population in 2011. You can also see that the national number for juvenile incarcerations for status offenses is not zero. As mentioned before, sometimes the behavior of the juvenile is a factor that is difficult to quantify. There is also a trend of "push back" on status crime decriminalization with 33 states technically permitting the detention of status offenders.

Even presuming that Wyoming only decreased the incarceration of status offenders to precisely the national average, we would shift our incarcerations to look more like this:

Remember that this chart is not based on real current data. This chart is based on what Wyoming juvenile incarceration could have been reduced to in 2011 if status offenses had been decriminalized and status offenders were only incarcerated to the same level as national standards.

In this theoretical world, our technical violation incarcerations would also be decreased for those juveniles who were charged only with status offenses but there is not an easy way to determine what that reduction would look like.

What about juvenile arrests?

This is what categorized Wyoming juvenile arrests look like.

What would it look like if by decriminalizing status offenses we reduced that category to the same as national standards?

You can see that visually our theoretical reduction of criminal arrests for status offenses puts Wyoming's categorized juvenile arrests more in line with the juvenile arrests in the rest of the country. (Of course, Wyoming alcohol related arrests now jumps out and catches your eye, but that's another story).

Wyoming has made attempts to improve and reform our juvenile justice system. In fact, we've followed many of the suggestions that national juvenile experts and others have suggested. I am firmly of the opinion that the only way to make real positive changes to our juvenile justice system is to start by making sure that we all understand the issues in the same way.

I'm not proposing that decriminalization of status offenses is the one-step solution to all of the problems within Wyoming's juvenile justice system. Instead I am suggesting that decriminalization of status offenses and deinstitutionalization of status offenders would be great first steps.