Justice for Juveniles Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be here today to advance the Justice for Juveniles Act. I thank Chairman Nadler, Leader Hoyer, and my colleague, Congressman Armstrong, for their support and partnership on this effort.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act, or PLRA, was passed in 1996 in an effort to decrease so-called frivolous lawsuits brought by prisoners. Chief among the PLRA's mandates was a requirement that before seeking relief for civil rights violations in court, a detained person must exhaust administrative remedies.

Whatever the merits of that underlying legislation, we now have broad bipartisan agreement that the language is overbroad in its application to juveniles.

Studies have consistently shown that juveniles are both more likely to be abused while in detention and less likely to navigate the administrative remedies that bar them from seeking relief.

For those of us who have kids or who have worked with children, it is easy to imagine the difficulty a young person in detention might have navigating complex legal systems necessary to raise a complaint.

Young people in the criminal or juvenile justice system are more likely than not to be functionally illiterate, and science has shown that the brain is not fully developed until a person is in their mid- twenties. It is one of the many reasons our justice system makes a distinction between juvenile and adult offenses.

That is what we hope to acknowledge with the Justice for Juveniles Act by exempting juveniles from the requirements of the PLRA.

In addition, the PLRA also limits the kind of relief that juveniles might seek for civil rights violations while in detention. They cannot seek relief now for emotional injuries without physical ones as well, but studies show that youth are especially prone to psychological injury and abuse, which they often face in detention.

Finally, the PLRA limits the recovery of attorney's fees in such cases. Again, juveniles are less likely to have independent resources to fund an attorney, so that makes it harder for young people to find an attorney to vindicate their rights.

To those who might question whether we need to correct the PLRA, I offer the story of the Glen Mills Schools, which inspired this bill.

For almost 200 years, youth from across the United States were sent to Glen Mills when they ran afoul of the law. But the school's bucolic campus and renowned athletic teams masked serious daily violence inflicted upon children placed there.

An explosive 2019 report by The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed years of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of the young residents, including broken bones, threats of retaliation, and sustained physical assaults at the hands of staff members. Although the stories from Glen Mills are heartbreaking, they are not unique.

Reports show that mistreatment of young people in juvenile facilities happens all the time across the country.

Just this past March, despite the recent example of Glen Mills, children were removed from yet another juvenile detention facility, just a few miles away, after horrifying new allegations of abuse.

This commonsense, bipartisan legislation passed unanimously on the House floor last Congress and has the support of over 60 organizations.

I, again, thank Chairman Nadler and the committee members and staff who helped advance this bill, and I thank the dedicated leadership team who brought the bill to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation again.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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