<\/p>\n
Lowering California\u2019s transfer standard under AB 2040 would send more teens to adult prison, increasing recidivism and denying needed rehabilitation services.<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
I was 16 years old when a California court sentenced me to 31 years to life in an adult maximum-security prison. There were no programs designed for youth, and no counseling for the wounds I carried that led me to prison. What I found inside instead was violence, isolation and trauma layered upon trauma.<\/p>\n
Once, a guard looked at me and said, \u201cHey youngster, do yourself a favor and hang yourself. You\u2019re never getting out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adult prison did not heal my traumas, it buried them deeper. Yet I survived and came home, proving what research, faith and lived experience all tell us: Young people have a tremendous capacity to change.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, a bill currently moving through the California legislature bets against that.<\/p>\n
Assembly Bill 2040<\/a>, authored by Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo, R-Visalia, lowers the evidentiary standard a court must meet before sending a child to adult court. Under current law, a judge must find by \u201cclear and convincing evidence\u201d that a young person cannot be rehabilitated in the juvenile system \u2014 a deliberately high bar that reflects the California Supreme Court\u2019s own recognition that transfer is the most severe punishment the juvenile system can impose.<\/p>\n AB 2040 would replace that bar with \u201cpreponderance of the evidence,\u201d the lowest standard in California law (essentially, more likely than not). I will be testifying against this bill before the Assembly Public Safety Committee this month.<\/p>\n Under AB 2040, any 16 or 17-year-old charged with a felony could be sent to adult court. The case for sending more children to adult prison rests on the idea that harsher punishment produces safer communities. But research overwhelmingly says that is simply not true, and skips over something anyone who has worked with young people knows: kids change. They grow. Given real support and real opportunity, they can become remarkable people.<\/p>\n Research shows<\/a> that youth incarcerated in adult facilities recidivate more often, reoffend faster, commit more offenses and have longer criminal careers than peers who remained in the juvenile system. The Department of Justice\u2019s own research<\/a> reached the same conclusion, finding that transfer laws have produced the unintended effect of increasing recidivism.<\/p>\n Youth in the juvenile system are less likely to reoffend, in part because California law requires juvenile facilities to provide schooling, mental health services and family engagement. Adult prisons carry no such mandate, and rarely deliver them. Sending a teenager into that environment doesn\u2019t address what brought them there; it simply removes the very tools most likely to bring them back.<\/p>\n I am living proof of what is possible when a person is not written off.<\/p>\n While incarcerated, I earned six associate degrees with honors and co-founded a peer mentoring program. When I came home after 25 years, I worked two jobs to put myself through college and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor\u2019s degree in sociology from San Francisco State University.<\/p>\n What I achieved should not be the exception, it should be the expectation.<\/p>\n California currently requires courts to meet a \u201cclear and convincing\u201d evidentiary standard before transfer. That standard is already eroding. Just a few years ago, about 14% of transfer hearings ended with a child being sent to adult court. Today that number has nearly doubled to 27%<\/a>, according to the California Office of Youth and Community Restoration.<\/p>\n