On any given night in the U.S., there are approximately 60,500 youth confined in juvenile correctional facilities or other residential programs. Photographer Richard Ross has spent the past five years criss-crossing the country photographing the architecture, cells, classrooms and inhabitants of these detention sites. The resulting photo-survey, Juvenile-In-Justice, documents 350 facilities in over 30 states. It’s more than a peek into unseen worlds — it is a call to action and care.
The U.S. locks up children at more than six times the rate of all other developed nations. The over 60,000 average daily juvenile lockups, a figure estimated by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), are also disproportionately young people of color. With an average cost of $80,000 per year to lock up a child, the U.S. spends more than $5 billion annually on youth detention. On top of the cost, in its recent report No Place for Kids, the AECF presents evidence to show that youth incarceration does not reduce recidivism rates, does not benefit public safety and exposes those imprisoned to further abuse and violence.
Ross thinks his images of juvenile lock-ups can, and should, be “ammunition” for the ongoing policy and funding debates between reformers, staff, management and law-makers.
Ross thinks his images of juvenile lock-ups can, and should, be “ammunition” for the ongoing policy and funding debates between reformers, staff, management and law-makers.
“My images were used by a senate subcommittee as part of a discussion on Federal legislation to prevent pre-adjudicated, detained [pre-trial] juveniles from being housed with kids who’d committed hard crimes. You shouldn’t house these populations together,” says Ross. “That’s a great thing for me to know that my work is being used for advocacy rather than for the masturbatory art world I grew up in.”
As a career photographer and professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, Ross knows his way around a camera. In 2007, he was awarded a Guggenheim Felllowship for his global seriesArchitecture of Authority. At that time, the project was near its end and Ross was able to redirect money and momentum toward Juvenile-In-Justice.
“I respect artists that deal with surface, texture, shape, form and concept,” says Ross, “but my heart lies with people who try to change the world and feel they can have a difference in making people think differently.”
To that end, Ross’s involvement wasn’t limited to simply taking photographs. Over the course of the project, he interviewed over a thousand juveniles.
“I consider it a privilege to sit in a cell with these kids for an hour and listen to their stories,” says Ross. “Every time I went in to a cell I’d sit on the floor. I’ve a terrible back, but I’d sit on the concrete floor so the kid was above me and had the visual authority to realize that I was subordinate to he or she, and I took direction from them.”
The stories he heard covered a range of issues, including children running drugs, parental abuse, homelessness, suicide attempts, addiction and illiteracy. But as difficult as the juveniles’ lives are, Ross is astonished by America’s widespread reliance on incarceration in its attempts to intervene.
“Many of these children should be out in the community getting better services and treatment where they stand a chance of rehabilitating and being corrected. From lockdown facilities we’re not going to see a change in behavior. Maybe society needs this to gain retribution against kids that they think have gone wild? But for the most part, these are vulnerable kids who come from dysfunctional families. And, for the most part, the crime is a crime of lack of expectation, a crime of a lack of opportunity,” says Ross.
States have turned away from punishing acts such as truancy and delinquency with detention; acts that are not criminal for an adult but have in the past siphoned youths into the court system. Less detention has been accompanied by less violent crime among youth.
“It may seem counter intuitive, but if you look at the types of offenses for which we’re no longer detaining youth, it is not,” says Sarah Jane Forman, assistant professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and director of the Youth Justice Clinic which provides legal counsel to indigent youth. “The kids who have committed serious violent crimes; they remain locked up.”
Not only is being locked up ineffective as a deterrent in youths who have not reached full cognitive development and don’t understand the consequences of their actions, it can actually make a criminal out of a potentially law-abiding kid.
“We are addicted to incarceration,” says Dr. Barry Krisberg, lecturer and director of research and policy at the Berkeley School of Law’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy. “Young people [when detained] often get mixed in with those incarcerated on more serious offenses. Violence and victimization is common in juvenile facilities and it is known that exposure to such an environment accelerates a young person toward criminal behaviors.”
At the mid-point of the Juvenile-In-Justice project, Ross partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF).
“The images I saw the Annie E. Casey Foundation had didn’t have the power I knew I could deliver for them,” says Ross. “I decided to give them all my images so they could have ammunition for actionable change.”
Recent economic woes have brought spending on incarceration under scrutiny. The AECF reports that “states face enormous budget deficits and [are] looking for ways to trim spending, highlighting an emerging trend in which at least 18 states have closed more than 50 juvenile corrections facilities over the past four years.”
Following repeated abuse scandals in California Youth Authority (CYA) facilities in the ’90s, the Golden State carried out the largest program of decarceration in U.S. history. Reducing its total number of facilities from 11 to 3 and slashing the CYA population by nearly 90 percent, California simultaneously witnessed a precipitous drop in crime committed by under-18s. The AECF identifies this as a common trend.
“States which lowered juvenile confinement rates the most from 1997 to 2007 saw a greater decline in juvenile violent crime arrests than states which increased incarceration rates or reduced them more slowly,” says the report.
“In 2004, it was reported that over one thousand youth had been sexually assaulted by staff in the Texas juvenile justice system,” says Krisberg. “It was the emergence of legislation and scandals simultaneously that had people realizing these systems were unfixable.”
Access and Impact
Adopting a “philosophy of transparency,” Ross found access to correctional facilities a continual negotiation. “Nobody says, ‘Oh sure, just come in’,” says Ross. His partnership with the AECF — a non-profit known for its advocacy against juvenile prisons — was both a help and a hindrance. “Sometimes the name helped, sometimes it closed the door,” says Ross.
Ross, who can give his list of good and poor facilities and compare the efficacy of their management regimes, was always aware of institutions’ will to influence what he could and could not photograph.
“I’m completely supportive of institutions that protect juveniles; that’s their charge. I’m conscious of making sure the kid is protected and that my well-meaning efforts don’t damage the kid by revealing something, especially if their case is pre-adjudicated. [But] I have very little tolerance for an institution that is more concerned with covering its ass, and some of these places are.”
Yet, even in poor facilities, Ross also feels his work can potentially benefit the staff.
“If you have a situation that is terrible and you show images, then the people [that work] in those institutions can use them and go to a legislature and the more they can say, ‘Our situation is dire — the way we are treating kids — we need to change it’.”
In one instance, the director of a detention unit in Reno, Nevada showed Ross’ photos to school principals in the facility’s catchment area. Under a zero-tolerance policy toward violence, a schoolyard scuffle at the principals’ schools could result in children being sent to the lock-up. The director asked the principals to think about whether his facility was a suitable solution, or if incidents could be attended to without the use of a cinder block cell.
“The 13-year-old’s mother cannot take off work until at least 6 o’clock or she’ll lose her job,” says Ross, explaining the circumstances of one child he met. “I said to the kid, ‘Don’t worry, your mommy will be here soon.’ We’re not talking about hardened killers. They’re frightened by the system.”
The Juvenile-In-Justice website includes a Google-Map with geotagged images.
“It allows people who work in isolated areas from one another to make ‘site-visits’ sitting in an office,” says Ross. “Maybe practitioners can get ideas about alternative methods.”
Complexity
There exists no magic strategy for helping children who’ve found themselves subject to criminal law. In some cases, Ross concedes that detention can provide stability.
“Some of them are nurtured and dealt with; in some cases they don’t have regular bedtimes, meals or shelters. They’re given stability for the first time. The officers act as juvenile counselors and in many cases they are the first sane male voice that try to listen to the kids, hear about their lives and try to impart coping skills. It is terrible that sometimes institutions do this and the family has not. And I don’t know how to solve it. All I can do is look at it, show differences in architecture and attitudes.”
On the other hand, Ross cannot separate his work from his personal politics and an appreciation of complexity.
“I try to be somewhat objective and I feel like my camera is neutral, but I still have my tongue in my cheek because when you meet a kid that’s been held for three and a half years, hasn’t come to trial, his mother was a crack addict who tried to kill him two months before he ran away from home at 13; he’s never had a bedtime; he’s never had a present that he’s unwrapped on his birthday, he may have graduated elementary school where he was in Special Ed all the time; then he’s with a group of kids with whom he has allegedly car-jacked a vehicle and allegedly gang-raped a woman. There are victims here but I do feel that kids like this are victims of society — of a political system, an economic system and an education system.”
“Some of these kids really don’t stand a chance at all. Have they committed crimes? Yes. But has society failed in the social contract to keep these kids in a safe environment? Absolutely.”
Perhaps more than any other factor, the incarceration of youth is effected by the education of youth. Ross often cites the situation in Oakland, a city which spends $4945 per child in its public school system, but $224,712 per child incarcerated in the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center.
“That’s an equation that’s somewhat perverse,” says Ross. And he’s no the only one who thinks so. “People on the far left and on the far right of the political system are saying there is something wrong here economically. Maybe there’s a way we can adjust it?”
Developing an Audience
Ross makes use of data visualizations and statistics on his site to engage viewers in the issue, but the images themselves must be compelling. He brings all his photography skills to bear in order to lure the viewer.
“These flows of information are great little sound bites but how do you visualize them? How does a person see? All of good advertising seduces you in first and then you can analyze the message,” says Ross.
In an effort to maximize the effect of his photography, Ross will give away images for free to non-profit groups working actively to improve conditions within, and laws pertaining to, juvenile detention. The Juvenile-In-Justice website regularly publishes new images, often grouped around a theme. Maintaining an overarching perspective and an eye on complexity, the website also features articles on associated topics such as trauma, rape, prison architecture and best practices.
It’s not all about the photography, but for Ross it never was.
Photos: Richard Ross
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