By Mary Sell
The Decatur Daily
MONTGOMERY — In the four-year period ending in 2012, 253 teenagers younger than 18 were in Alabama Department of Corrections’ facilities.
The youngest were two 15 year olds, according to department records.
While state law allows offenders as young as 14 to be locked up as adults and with adults, the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act will soon change how the state treats offenders younger than 18. The act mandates they be confined separately, away from older inmates. Failing to do so will put the state at risk of losing some minimal federal funding.
Some groups, such as the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, say youths never should have been locked up with adults in the first place and don’t belong within Corrections Department’s walls. In addition to being “prey” in prison, teens can come out more dangerous than when they entered, those groups say.
“Instead of changing negative behavior, they just learn more bad behavior,” said Ebony Howard, a staff attorney and juvenile justice policy specialist for Southern Poverty.
An official with the state’s Department of Youth Services said that agency isn’t equipped to house dangerous teens. State leaders said cost also is a factor in how young offenders are handled.
“In order to create the extensive programs that Southern Poverty or others want, it is going to require a lot of money — money we don’t have,” said state Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, who is chairman of the Joint Legislative Prison Committee.
Searching for options
Teen offenders are being housed at Corrections facilities statewide. Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas said he recently had 18 teens in custody. Moving them all to one facility where they can be housed away from adults is one option under consideration to meet requirements of the rape elimination act.
“(They’re) a unique population that you need to handle a bit differently than someone who is a bit more mature,” Thomas said. “Some of them have done some pretty brutal things and committed some pretty serious offenses.”
The majority of offenders younger than 18 who have been housed in adult prisons in recent years were convicted of first-degree robbery, according to department records. Those records don’t include the convictions of 49 teens who had youthful offender status in 2009-12. Their records are sealed.
“Most kids are going in for robbery in the first degree,” Howard said. “It is a serious offense; we don’t take that lightly. But these laws were created for teens killing teens, not the kid driving a getaway car.”
A few Tennessee Valley teens have been sentenced to adult facilities in recent years. Among them:
Michael Wayne Butler, of Athens, was 16 in 2007 when he and his uncle, Tommy Wayne Butler, were charged multiple counts of kidnapping, rape and assault on the elder Butler’s in-laws. Michael Butler’s release date is 2032, according to corrections officials.
Miguel Valladeres, of Decatur, was 14 when he was charged with attempted murder after he shot a 17-year-old boy in the head. Valladeres is in prison until 2041.
Southern Poverty research shows most teens are sentenced to up to five years in prison. The second most frequent sentencing range is 15-20 years.
New federal mandates likely will change how that time is served.
Trying to meet standards
Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003, a policy against sexual abuse in federal, state and local facilities. The act’s standards are just now going into effect and include:
No inmate younger than 18 may be placed in a housing unit where contact will occur with adult inmates in a common space, shower area or sleeping quarters;
Outside of housing units, agencies must either maintain “sight and sound separation” between youth and adult inmates or provide direct staff supervision when the two are together;
Agencies must make their best efforts to avoid placing youthful inmates in isolation to comply with the act.
“We have until August of next year to have 10 of our correctional facilities audited,” Thomas said. “We are not meeting that standard now, but we are working on it.”
He said one solution may be to house all teen inmates in one facility, away from older inmates, where they can have educational and vocational opportunities.
Another possibility is contracting with an outside agency to handle teens who have been sentenced as adults.
“We are looking at some other options now, but we’re not far enough along to discuss them,” he said.
States that don’t meet the new requirements could lose 5 percent of their federal Justice Department money, unless their governors certify the same amount of money is being used to bring the states into compliance.
That’s not a big financial incentive, though. Of the Department of Corrections’ $437 million in 2012 funding, about $9 million came from federal stimulus and bonus funds. About $941,000 came from federal grants.
The Corrections Department is the state’s second biggest non-education expense. According to its July monthly report, the latest available, Alabama prisons were at 189 percent capacity while being staffed at about 60 percent.
“When it comes to prisons, it is the same story, different day: How do you pay for it?” Ward asked.
He said advocates against putting teens in prisons have some valid points, but it’s a complex issue, and convincing the general public that some of these offenders don’t belong in prison would be a tough sell.
“Youthful offenders can remain in DOC custody, but in order to comply with (the federal act), you will have to segregate them from the general population,” he said.
Thomas said those who say teens should be housed separately “don’t need to persuade me their arguments are valid. To me, we should be focusing on a solution, not whether they are right or wrong.”
A report this month from the advocacy group Campaign for Youth Justice shows during the past eight years, 23 states have passed legislation to reduce prosecution of youths in adult criminal courts and end their placement in adult facilities.
Howard said society protects the 14-17 age group in most situations.
“We don’t let kids drive at a certain age. We don’t let them get married, and we don’t let them join the armed forces because they need protection — except when we get to criminal culpability,” Howard said. “We will still take them as young as 14 in Alabama, charge and convict them as adults and put them in adult facilities with full grown men and women. We do that despite the fact that we know they are far more likely to commit suicide; they are more likely to be raped by older inmates and more likely to be assaulted by older inmates.”
Statistics on the abuse of teens in prison vary.
A 2013 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated in 2011-12, inmates ages 16 and 17 in adult prisons and jails did not have “significantly higher” rates of sexual abuse when compared to adult inmates. About 1.8 percent of teens in prisons reported being abused by another inmate; compared to 2 percent of older inmates. About 3.2 percent of the 16- and 17-year-olds reported being abused by staff, compared to 2.4 percent of adult inmates. No data was available for 14- and 15-year-old offenders.
Campaign for Youth Justice cites statistics that state in 2005 and 2006, 21 percent and 13 percent, respectively, of victims of inmate-on-inmate sexual assaults were younger than 18. That age group also has the highest suicide rate of all inmates — 101 per 100,000 between 2000-02. That’s 19 times the rate of teens not in prison. The Corrections Department reported 105 assaults in July; 805 for the year.
Thomas said the department doesn’t track whether teen inmates are attacked more than other inmates, but protecting them “is a responsibility we have.”
Younger offenders, more serious crimes
Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly said there are two ways young offenders can end up in adult prison.
They can be transferred from the juvenile system when options there for the offender have been “exhausted.” Those are rare cases in his area, he said. More commonly, teen offenders are charged as adults automatically for certain serious crimes. State law says those crimes can include capital offenses, class A felonies, a felony in which a deadly weapon is used, and drug trafficking.
“My personal opinion is there are serious juvenile offenders who should be incarcerated in the adult prison system, but that should be the exception, not the rule. You should be able to look at the individual,” Connolly said.
“I’m in favor of a more individual review of the person and the crime they committed,” he said.
He pointed to Nathan Boyd as an example of when adult prison is needed. Boyd was 17 in 1999 when he and his brother were charged in the stabbing death of a restaurant owner. Boyd was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He’s now arguing for a new sentence because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling that regulates life-without-parole sentences involving juveniles.
Connolly opposes a new, lesser sentence for Boyd just because he was young when he committed murder. He said Boyd, prior to the killing, “failed horribly at being rehabilitated in the juvenile system.”
“Not only did he participate in a horrendous robbery and murder, but he’s committed about 20 infractions while incarcerated,” Connolly said.
Of the 34 teens who entered the Department of Corrections as non-youthful offenders in 2012, 15 came from Montgomery County.
“Many of our crimes are committed by young people,” said Ellen Brooks, the county’s district attorney. “It seems they get younger and younger, and the crimes more serious.”
Brooks said her priority is protecting the public and she wonders if there’s not an option, at least for some cases, somewhere between juvenile facilities and prison.
“Right now, it’s sort of all or nothing,” she said.
Brooks said the state should explore the option of a blended system, which include both juvenile and adult sentences for some offenders.
It is for the defendant who is not ready for the adult system, but for whom the youth system is not sufficient, Brooks said.
Howard said the best place for teen offenders is the juvenile justice system.
But Allen Peaton, deputy director for administration at the Alabama Department of Youth Services, said the department doesn’t have the facilities to handle some of the offenders currently under corrections’ custody.
He said his department doesn’t have an official position on whether teens should be in adult prisons, but most of the offenders at juvenile facilities have been convicted of property or drug crimes and some simple assaults.
One of those facilities is the Tennessee Valley Juvenile Detention Center in Tuscumbia. The facility serves north Alabama counties that include Lawrence and Morgan.
“We don’t have the facilities to hold those types of (violent) offenders,” Peaton said. “We don’t have the facilities and we don’t have the budgets.”
Mary Sell covers state government for The Decatur Daily. She can be reached at msell@decaturdaily.com.
By the numbers
Since 2010, 167 offenders ages 16 and 17, and two 15-year-olds, entered Alabama prisons as non-youthful offenders. They were convicted of:
First-degree robbery: 86
Murder: 14
Second-degree robbery: 13
Discharge of gun in occupied building/vehicle: 5
First-degree assault: 4
First-degree burglary: 4
Second-degree burglary: 4
Third-degree burglary: 4
Manslaughter: 3
Attempted murder: 3
First-degree attempted assault: 3
First-degree theft of property: 3
Third-degree robbery: 3
Second-degree assault: 2
Second-degree theft of property: 2
First-degree rape: 2
First-degree sodomy: 1
Second-degree rape: 1
First-degree attempted burglary: 1
Trafficking methamphetamines: 1
First-degree receiving stolen property: 1
Second-degree receiving stolen property: 1
Unlawful breaking and entering of vehicle: 1
First-degree promoting prison contraband: 1
Distributing controlled substance: 1
First-degree arson: 1
Criminal conspiracy to commit controlled substance: 1
Offenses-public health/morals: 1
Convict destroying state property: 1
First-degree criminal mischief: 1
Youthful offenders’ records are sealed.
Source: Alabama Department of Corrections