The Family Life Center of Providence sponsored a town hall-style meeting at Classical High School downtown Monday evening to allow citizens to discuss a new state law that sends 17-year-olds to maximum security prison instead of a juvenile detention facility. The law, which passed in June, was meant to save the state money, but instead, critics say, has put Rhode Island in further debt.
Sending a 17-year-old to the juvenile remedial center, the "Training School," costs the Department of Children, Youth and Families $98,000 a year. The average cost of sending a convict to state prison is about $39,000, said Steven Brown, executive director of Rhode Island's branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. But because the state wants to protect the 17-year-olds from adult prisoners while incarcerated, it puts them in protective custody at the state prison's maximum security facility, which costs about $104,000.
The state, in other words, Brown said, approved a bill that ended up costing them more money.
Rep. David Segal, D-District 2, who attended the hearing, told The Herald that the state's first concern was maintaining the appearance of saving money. "People were desperate to prove that there were going to be savings," he said. "The budget needs to be balanced, so you can claim that (the bill) will save $3.6 million. And if nobody calls you on it, that $3.6 million, you can spend it somewhere else."
As of Wednesday, there were nine offenders incarcerated under the new law in maximum security, said Tracey Poole '85, chief of information and public relations for Rhode Island's Department of Corrections. Thirty-six minors have been placed in the state prison's maximum security facility under the law since July 1, Poole said.
At the Monday hearing, audience members - roughly 200 attended - spoke about the opportunities juveniles would never have once incarcerated. A panel, including a retired Rhode Island Superior Court judge, a city councilwoman, a psychologist and a youth group leader, moderated the event and responded to comments from audience members, some of whom were pre-selected by the Family Life Center.
One of the speakers, 17-year-old Dennys George, said the law was not helping young Hispanics like himself who are profiled by police. George was arrested this summer for drug possession, according to an October Associated Press article. George said at the hearing that he spent three days in the maximum security facility of the state's Adult Correctional Institute, time that will appear on his permanent record.
Another 17-year-old at the hearing said, "I'm treated like a child, yet when I make a mistake I'm treated like an adult."
A man whose son was incarcerated at 17 said, "When you send a child to prison at 17 - that ruins their entire life. That means low-end jobs, bad credit. For a 17-year-old five years is forever, 10 years is never going to come. We need help."
Brown, of the ACLU, said he was more concerned with the psychological effects prison has on 17-year-olds. "Most states don't automatically send minors for a very good reason," he said. "Sending juveniles to prison increases the recidivism rate. It becomes a training school for juveniles to learn more crime."
The meeting became an open forum on Rhode Island race issues as well as a discussion of the new state prison policy. Six of the eight panel members were racial or ethnic minorities, and the audience was largely black, Hispanic or South Asian. According to Segal, 63 percent of those incarcerated in the state are black or Hispanic, while Rhode Island was 88.9 percent white in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Several speakers accused the police of stopping teens for "driving while black." Stephen Fortunato, a former Superior Court associate justice and one of the forum moderators, said Rhode Island's criminal justice program promotes "systematic racism."
One audience member, who introduced himself only as Osiris and sported an aqua-blue shirt and a gold chain, said that the state's lawmakers had no scruples about passing the bill because they knew many of those affected would be minorities. "It looks like we voted for some wicked people," he said. "We need to get mad as hell. (The Rev.) Martin (Luther King Jr.) did it. Malcolm (X) did it. I can do it too," he said.
A petition opposing the law was signed by most members of the audience, and many spoke of picketing outside of the state house on Oct. 30, the day the House of Representatives may vote on the issue at a special session.
"I think people are pretty embarrassed now," Segal said. "I don't think anybody is going to stand in the way of reversing it."
A representative of Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 did not return a request for comment for this article.
