Kids need care, not cages: Investment, not incarceration, reduces crime

When I was a teenager caught up in the juvenile justice system, I learned something President Trump refuses to acknowledge: the system fails most kids it touches, and treating children like enemies of the state makes communities less safe.

This week, Trump announced plans to deploy 800 National Guard troops to Washington D.C., threatening that cities like Oakland and Baltimore could be next. Simultaneously, he's demanding that D.C. prosecute kids as young as 14 as adults. It's the same failed playbook — respond to complex social problems with more police, more cages for children, and now, soldiers on American streets.

What makes this particularly absurd is that crime is actually falling in the cities he's threatening. Baltimore is experiencing one of its lowest homicide rates in decades, down 23 percent from last year alone. My hometown of Oakland has seen similar progress through community investment, not militarization.

Trump's rhetoric diverges sharply from what actually transforms young lives. For instance, my co-worker J. Vasquez was sentenced to 31 years-to-life in adult prison when he was 16 — exactly the kind of punishment the president is championing. The system wrote Vasquez off completely. Despite every obstacle the adult prison system threw at him, Vasquez earned six associate degrees with honors and co-founded mentoring programs for other incarcerated young people.

Today, Vasquez is the policy and legal services manager at Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice in Oakland, where I work. He graduated summa cum laude from San Francisco State University. But Vasquez’s transformation happened in spite of being tried as an adult, not because of it.

Vasquez's story reflects what we see across our programs. We work with more than 100 young people each year — kids the system has given up on. Yet 94 percent of our participants report increased belonging and emotional wellness, while 100 percent develop new skills. Compare that to California's juvenile halls, which cost taxpayers an average of more than $300,000 per youth per year to incarcerate, yet sees very high recidivism rates. We're literally spending more than a quarter-million dollars per child to make them more likely to commit future crimes.

The data is overwhelming. In Oakland — one of the cities Trump has threatened with National Guard deployment — Community Works West found that youth in their restorative justice program had just a 13 percent recidivism rate over two years, at one-fifth the cost of traditional prosecution. Research consistently shows that youth processed in adult systems have higher recidivism rates than those in age-appropriate programs.

Baltimore, another city in Trump’s sights, offers an even starker example. Under Mayor Brandon Scott's leadership, the city is experiencing its lowest homicide rate on record through 42 summer youth camps, extended recreation center hours, and violence interruption programs that employ former offenders to mediate conflicts. Not through National Guard troops or adult prosecutions of children, but through investment in young people. Treating kids like kids.

The choice isn't complicated. We can follow Trump's path toward militarization and mass incarceration of children — creating more victims while wasting taxpayer dollars. Or we can follow the lead of cities like Baltimore and Oakland, investing in programs that actually work.

Crime rates are dropping across the country, including in D.C. where crime fell 35 percent in 2024. The last thing we need is a return to failed "tough on crime" policies that destroyed generations of young lives while making communities less safe.

I know what it's like to be written off by a system that sees only your worst moment. Kids need care, not cages. They need mentors who understand their struggles, communities that see their potential, and leaders who believe in second chances. Trump has a documented history of rushing to judgment on young people of color — he once called for the execution of five Black and Latino teenagers in the Central Park Five case, who were later exonerated by DNA evidence. We cannot let him repeat those mistakes on a national scale.

Vamsey Palagummi is managing director of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice whose commitment to supporting underserved populations comes from his own experience as a youth, spending time in juvenile hall and being placed on probation.