Jabreria Handy

Community Law In Action
Before the Attorney General’s Defending Childhood Task Force
Youth Advocate
November 29, 2011

Good afternoon. My name is Jabreira Handy and I was exposed to violence as a youth incarcerated as an adult. At the age of 16, I was charged as an adult in the adult criminal justice system. It is because of my exposure to the adult system that I’m here to urge this task force not to expose any more young people to violence in the justice system, particularly in adult jails or prisons. It’s also fitting because this hearing comes as here, in the city of Baltimore, we are debating whether to build another adult jail for youth charged as adults, which disturbs me. 

Words can't explain what I went through in the adult system. Tears hardly express the pain and discomfort of being judged as a criminal. At the age of sixteen, I got into an argument with my grandma. As she was disciplining me, I attempted to get her off me. I left the house and later on that day she died of a heart attack because of the argument. I was charged with her death. I was charged as an adult and spent eleven months in Baltimore City Detention Center. I was forced to shower with a woman twice my age and shamelessly exposed to a squat and cough in front of everyone while menstruating. I was neglected and did not receive the psychological and healthcare help I needed throughout my stay. I was treated as if I had been judged guilty of committing the crime or as they would say “as an adult.”

For example, to get to school we had to walk through a tunnel that went through the adult men’s prison. One day the facility went on lock down. We were told to turn our backs and close our eyes. But, in jail you learn to never turn your back or close your eyes. That day, we saw a man get stabbed to death.

I began to become institutionalized and it became a normal routine to wake up at six in the morning or randomly get searched. They eventually gave me a choice to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to go home. Even though I had committed no crime, I would have done anything to go home at that point. As a result of my plea, I got waived down as a juvenile with the charge of manslaughter spending four and a half months at Waxter’s Children’s Center and then sent to a placement in Pennsylvania for six and a half months. The bottom line is if I would have been charged as a juvenile, I would have received the services I needed in order to maintain and keep focused on future goals and would not have experienced the violence of the adult system.

I urge the task force not to wait to share these findings with the Attorney General in a report to be issued in December, 2012, but to ensure the Attorney General is aware of these issues and to urge the Attorney General to take immediate actions such as banning the placement of children in adult jails and prisons in the final Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations. Additionally, I urge the task force to recommend that the nation’s governors and state lawmakers end the practice of trying, sentencing and incarcerating youth in the adult criminal justice system to reduce recidivism and children’s exposure to violence.