WCC Public Policy Positions: Reform the Juvenile Justice System
As we did last session, here we continue to elaborate on each of the WCC’s 2025 Public Policy Positions. You can learn more about Catholic Social Teaching on the USCCB website.
Reform the juvenile justice system. Children are not adults. Wisconsin is one of only four states that automatically tries 17-year-olds as adults. Confining youth in adult institutions results in more physical and sexual abuse, higher recidivism, and more serious subsequent offenses. Wisconsin must return 17-year-olds to the juvenile justice system where they can receive developmentally appropriate treatment.
Catholic teaching holds that all offenders must be held accountable, but in a way that serves to rehabilitate them and to eventually reintegrate them into the community (see Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church 403, Catechism of the Catholic Church 2266). The U.S. bishops spell out this “paradoxical Catholic teaching on crime and punishment”:
We will not tolerate the crime and violence that threatens the lives and dignity of our sisters and brothers, and we will not give up on those who have lost their way. We seek both justice and mercy. Working together, we believe our faith calls us to protect public safety, promote the common good, and restore community. We believe a Catholic ethic of responsibility, rehabilitation, and restoration can become the foundation for the necessary reform of our broken criminal justice system.
In this same statement on criminal justice, the U.S. bishops are explicit in their opposition to treating young offenders as adults:
The actions of the most violent youth leave us shocked and frightened and therefore they should be removed from society until they are no longer dangerous. But society must never respond to children who have committed crimes as though they are somehow equal to adults–fully formed in conscience and fully aware of their actions. Placing children in adult jails is a sign of failure, not a solution. In many instances, such terrible behavior points to our own negligence in raising children with a respect for life, providing a nurturing and loving environment, or addressing serious mental or emotional illnesses.
Furthermore, for punishment to be an instrument of correction, the offender must be given hope. As Pope Francis noted in 2022, “It is right that those who have done wrong should pay for their mistake, but it is equally right that those who have done wrong should be able to redeem themselves for their mistake…. Any sentence must always have a window of hope.” All criminal justice must foster both rehabilitation and restoration. |
