Why should Wyoming Decriminalize Status Offenses?

by Tom Rose

If you have been following juvenile justice issues at all you may have come across the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation which has not decriminalized status offenses. You may even believe that you have an understanding of what that means. The concept is fairly simple: a status crime is an action that would not be a crime if it was committed by an adult. Examples of status offenses for which juveniles are arrested and incarcerated in Wyoming include truancy and running away from home.

Most states have pursued a path of decriminalization and deinstitutionalization of status offending youth since the 1974 federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was enacted "…supporting the development of community-based treatment programs and prohibiting incarceration of these youths".

Wyoming is the last hold-out state which maintains status offenses as criminal. Besides the federal law mandating decriminalization, other states have gotten on-board with decriminalization because it has been determined by research that arrest and incarceration are not effective tools to put status offenders back on the right path.

"Research and evidence-based approaches have proven that secure detention of status offenders is ineffective and frequently dangerous. Specifically, research has shown that:

• Detention facilities are often ill-equipped to address the underlying causes of status offenses;

• Detention does not serve as a deterrent to subsequent status-offending and/or delinquent behavior.

• Placing youth who commit status offenses in locked detention facilities jeopardizes their safety and well-being, and may increase the likelihood of delinquent or criminal behavior.

• Removing youth from their families and communities prohibits them from developing the strong social networks and support systems necessary to transition successfully from adolescence to adulthood."

I believe that decriminalization of status offenses is very important for Wyoming and I believe that we should change our laws accordingly. How can we make this happen? Some people believe that top-down changes at the legislative level are the only way to affect real change.

This approach has been attempted with juvenile justice issues in Wyoming with very little success. One example of such a law in Wyoming is the 2010 House Enrolled Act 5 which relates to the administration of a Juvenile Detention Risk Assessment (JDRA) which was to be used on every detained youth to determine whether incarceration was an appropriate remedy for their misbehavior.

As of the most recent JDRA report available online, a reported 689 Wyoming children were assessed in the fourteen months between July 2010 and September 2011. To understand what a small fraction of detained juveniles this applies to, the FBI data for 2010 reports that 6,019 juveniles were arrested in Wyoming in 2010 and 5,170 in 2010. This calculates to around 10% of detained Wyoming children who were evaluated according to the JDRA even though this tool was legislated to be used on all detained juveniles as part of the detention decision when a juvenile was arrested.

Part of the problem with a top-down legislative approach is that laws get mandated onto the population and law enforcement without any effort being made to understand the underlying realities. I have personally interviewed law enforcement personnel as recently as this year who were unaware that Wyoming even had a detention assessment tool and were frankly disbelieving that it was a law that the JDRA be administered to every detained juvenile prior to incarceration.

Another approach to changing the status quo of a particular law is to go "grass roots", gather petition signatures from registered voters and create collective legitimacy for a position before taking the issue before legislators.

I have spoken to Wyoming legislators and heard it stated publicly in committee meetings that legislators generally prefer to speak to representatives of a collective group in regard to legislative issues. This is because a group of citizens who all share a common concern indicate a casual or even more formal voting block which tends to make elected officials pay more attention to an issue which can be addressed legislatively. Wyoming legislators with whom I've spoken would genuinely like to represent the needs and wants of their constituencies. They just don't always know what those needs and wants are.

One limitation of the grass-roots approach is that it presumes that the mere action of gaining a citizen signature indicates an informed position. Some recent reports call into question whether people signing petitions should really be considered informed citizens.

I believe that we the people can only create effective change to Wyoming juvenile justice law by first understanding the positions of all of the stakeholders. On the issue of decriminalization of status offenses there are many stakeholders. There are the juveniles and their families, law enforcement officers, educators and administrators, the Department of Family Services, guardians ad litem, prosecutors and judges, and finally legislators and the citizens who vote them into office (although we may discover some other less obvious stakeholders along the way).

Rather than telling you what to think about status offenses and why they should be decriminalized I would like to do something different. This series will focus on the issue of decriminalization of status offenses and it will be an ongoing series in which we explore the who, what, when, where and why. You see, legal advocates have tried to reform this particular aspect of Wyoming law before and they have failed. Wyoming continues to have the second-highest juvenile arrest rate in the country. We also have the second-highest juvenile incarceration rate in the country. If our persistent position on criminalization of status offenses was working well, we should see reduced juvenile arrests and incarcerations, shouldn't we? If the status quo on status offenses is not working; let's change it.