Eleven-year-olds stealing cars. Children as young as nine being arrested. Teenagers in groups carjacking mothers and their children. 

In February, Memphis Police Department chief C.J. Davis said her department’s leaders constantly struggle to come up with solutions to juvenile crime during sometimes long and drawn-out conversations. 

“Sometimes we walk out of there scratching our heads because we don’t have all the answers, and all answers don’t rest within the Memphis Police Department,” Davis said. “Some of the answers rest in the homes of parents who sometimes don’t know where their children are. And I know that might be the elephant in the room, that in order to get past the hurt, we’ve got to dig into the wound a little bit deeper.”

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According to most experts, combating juvenile crime requires a collaborative effort from the community, encompassing local and state governments, schools, nonprofits and citizens. 

In Memphis, leaders seem to agree that youth are able to get guns too easily and that they are seeing a trend of younger juvenile offenders and more violent offenses, even as the number of juvenile charges is still below pre-pandemic levels. 

About this series

In “Minor Offenders, Major Offenses,” our team of reporters will examine the challenges these coming-of-age criminals present to our local law enforcement officers and our city at large.

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But there are varying opinions on how to deal with those trends. The Tennessee legislature is considering several bills during the current session that would allow more juvenile offenders to be tried and sentenced as adults. Others suggest juvenile crime could be stopped at or near its start, through intervention, education and employment efforts. 

If local leaders don’t find a solution — or solutions — to violent juvenile crime, “we’ll be living out this vicious nightmare over and over again,” said Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said. “It’s not going to go away unless we do something.”

“Are you doing everything you can to push resources out into the community?”

For Harris, the problem needs multiple solutions: Giving minors opportunities before they get into trouble, intervening at the first sign that something is wrong and rehabilitating juveniles “once they find themselves on the wrong side of the law,” he said. 

To that end, Shelby County government offers a summer camp grant program, to allow select youth to go to summer camp at no cost to their families, and the 901 Student Passport program, which allows school-aged children free admission to nine local museums and cultural attractions. 

The county also launched its Youth and Family Resource Center inside the former Raleigh library, at 3157 Powers Road, in April 2022. 

Children and adolescents apprehended by police officers or school resource officers for certain minor offenses can be referred to the center instead of being summoned to Juvenile Court. Youths and families may also come in as self-referrals.

However, law enforcement does not transport juveniles to Youth and Family Resource Center. 

A total of 170 juveniles have been referred to the center so far; there, they are connected to off-site services such as mentoring, counseling and career and technical education.

Bill Gibbons, executive director of the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis and president of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, said the center’s model should be expanded citywide and be available 24/7.

But Gibbons also thinks police should be able to detain minors for certain nonviolent crimes, such as car thefts. Currently, most of the minors accused of nonviolent crimes are issued a summons to appear in Juvenile Court. 

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Last year, the Shelby County Commission approved legislation proposed by Harris that would double the number of Juvenile Court youth counselors placed in police precincts, from three to six. 

In doing so, Harris hopes to double the number of families who receive assistance, including mental health resources, housing and job placement, as well. 

“When people talk about community policing, that’s really what they’re kind of talking about,” Harris said. “Are you doing everything you can to push resources out into the community? Because if you do that, then you will, over the medium and long term, have a real and a durable impact on crime.”

“How do we change the hearts and minds of these young people?”

Like Harris, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said solving a crime problem doesn’t always involve the criminal justice system; intervention must start before the first crime is committed. 

“How do we change the hearts and minds of these young people so they never pick up a gun or they never break into a car and they go down the right path and not the wrong path?” Strickland said in a December 2022 interview. 

In one of his January newsletters, Strickland touted Opportunity Memphis R3, a city program that launched last year and is geared toward people ages 16-24 who are not in school but are unemployed. Its three Rs are Rethinking, Rebuilding and Rebranding, and the program can teach so-called Opportunity Youth about job interviews, financial management and school applications. 

It also purports to help participants figure out what they want to do with their lives. 

Strickland said that through December of last year, 71 people had participated; all but two were enrolled (or awaiting enrollment) in school, working or had earned professional certifications.

Another bright spot for Strickland? A partnership between the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis and Memphis-Shelby County Schools that has shown success in keeping minors away from crime. 

 The partnership started at Craigmont High School five years ago. All of its club members have graduated from high school, according to Strickland, and all of them went on to college, got a job or joined the military.

Two years ago, the Memphis City Council approved $9 million in federal funding to expand the club programming into 10 additional high schools. The first of these clubs was launched in January 2022. 

Strickland also cited the city’s expanded summer jobs program and its university pre-kindergarten program among initiatives aimed at youth and juvenile crime. He hopes the launch of Transit Vision, a redesign of the area’s transit system over the next seven years, will give youth more reliable transportation to their jobs in the future. 

“We would like to put them on a better path.”

If a child has already gotten involved in the juvenile system, it’s not too late to receive rehabilitative services, said former Juvenile Court of Memphis & Shelby County Judge Dan Michael.

Hope Academy, an MSCS school in the detention center, is aimed at preventing recidivism among minors. 

Many Hope Academy students get transferred to the adult system, Micheal said, but for those who don’t, the recidivism rate is much lower — around 9-10%. 

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The Memphis Police Department is hoping to provide other intervention efforts by working with the Shelby County Juvenile Court to conduct case reviews on repeat violent offenders, said MPD’s Deputy Chief of Special Operations Stephen Chandler.

“We definitely don’t want to see more children harmed or killed as a result of their actions,” Chandler said. “We know that they know the difference between right and wrong, but some of the decisions may be irrational. And we would like to put them on a better path to that.”

Current Juvenile Court of Memphis & Shelby County Judge Tarik Sugarmon said he wants to work with the Raphah Institute in Nashville to provide restorative justice services to the community. 

Victims and offenders would be brought together to share their experiences, talk about who was harmed during the crime and determine what an offender might do to repair the harm. 

“I know that might be the elephant in the room, that in order to get past the hurt, we’ve got to dig into the wound a little bit deeper.”

Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis
Memphis police director

Sugarmon said restorative justice allows youth who have minor offenses or whose crimes are beginning to escalate to own up to their actions and participate in a plan for rehabilitation. He said it also empowers victims by allowing them to participate in the process and giving them a chance to help decide the proper reparations.

“It doesn’t do the citizen any good for a child who has a minor offense, or a felony offense not involving a threat of violence, to sit and languish in a system where they’re not getting the services,” Sugarmon said. “We want to get them to the rehabilitative restorative side.”

“They all have childhood trauma that has gone unresolved.”

Tennessee lawmakers are currently looking at legislation that would limit local judges’ discretion and require them to send minors to the adult criminal justice system in certain circumstances. There are also other, competing proposals that would either keep teenagers who hadn’t completed their sentences by their 18th birthday in juvenile or adult incarceration. 

Sugarmon, for one, said he supports “blended sentencing,” which would keep juvenile offenders in the justice system past the age of 19, when juvenile court’s jurisdiction ends. 

However, some experts say that a proactive push to reduce childhood trauma — not more incarceration — is the best way to reduce juvenile crime.

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According to the Sentencing Project, incarceration exposes young people to additional trauma without reforming their behavior — and at great cost to taxpayers.

“Incarcerating youth undermines public safety, damages young people’s physical and mental health, impedes their educational and career success, and often exposes them to abuse,” according to a December 2022 Sentencing Project report.

That report recommends community-based programs — such as those referenced by Harris and Strickland — instead of incarceration, saying they are more effective and less costly to governments. The recommendations focus on mental health, employment, wraparound services for families, and “credible messengers” — an example being Youth Villages’ Memphis Allies.

Youth Villages formed Memphis Allies last year with the goal of reducing gun violence in the city. The program, which has already raised more than $21 million and has a proposed budget of more than $60 million for its first four years, works with at-risk juveniles and adults through partnerships with neighborhood organizations. Some of the programs they work with include LifeLine to Success and Neighborhood Christian Centers. 

Through its SWITCH program, teams of specialists reach out to at-risk youth. From there, if all goes well, participants will be afforded on-site services. 

These cover everything from meeting basic needs, such as a place to get a meal or take a shower, to studying for a GED and receiving job training. Participants also have access to a life coach, a case manager and a clinical therapist.

“They all have childhood trauma that has gone unresolved,” said Lesley Dumas, who oversees the clinical work of SWITCH youth. 

A 2018 juvenile justice reform bill driven by former Gov. Bill Haslam included $4.5 million for community-based services through the state mental health department.

Some of that has gone to Youth Villages, according to Mental Health commissioner Marie Williams, for a program housed within the Shelby County Juvenile Court with a goal of identifying kids who are uninsured or whose insurance doesn’t cover behavioral health care.

“If these policies worked, we would be the safest country in the history of the planet.”

Research also shows trying juveniles as adults is counterproductive and may end up making the problem worse. 

Historically, Shelby County has transferred minors to criminal court more often than any other jurisdiction in Tennessee, according to Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, which published a report last fall with recommendations for youth justice reform. 

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“We need to limit that significantly, not because youth don’t sometimes commit dangerous offenses, (but because it) does so much more damage than it does good,” he said. “We end up throwing away teenagers and writing them off forever.”

“If these policies worked,” Spickler said of mass incarceration, “we would be the safest country in the history of the planet.”

Some lawmakers in Tennessee are attempting to address adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, as part of a larger effort to reform the state’s Department of Children’s Services. Evidence shows DCS has often compounded the trauma experienced by the foster children in its custody — children whom the state separated from their families because they were already abused or neglected.

“The reality is that the overwhelming majority of children in the juvenile justice system have experienced abuse and neglect,” said Linda O’Neal, who ran the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth from 1988 to 2018.

“The more we can do to prevent abuse and neglect, to prevent family dysfunction ... the better the outcomes for children,” she said.

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In the 1980s, O’Neal said, far more children were held in adult jails — which research shows does not reduce crime. Throughout her career, though, O’Neal said policy moved to be more in line with research.

She said she opposes the effort in the General Assembly that is moving in the other direction, with proposals to make it easier to try juveniles as adults and to build more bed space for juvenile offenders.

“I think those make good soundbites,” O’Neal said, “but they don’t make good policy decisions.”