From Punishment to Prevention: A Better Approach to Addressing Youth Gun Possession

The Sentencing Project released a report on adolescent gun possession cases, highlighting the harms of punishment and calling for comprehensive community-based initiatives to reduce gun violence. This report offers research on the reasons why youth carry guns, ranging from peer influence to past experiences of trauma and walks through how juvenile court systems typically respond to gun possession cases. Based on a national survey of youth defenders and a review of local court practices, this report finds that gun possession cases are increasingly handled with rigidity and harshness—youth are often categorically denied diversion opportunities, regularly transferred to adult court, and placed in locked facilities for gun possession cases. Such punitive responses ignore young people’s perceived need for protection, deepen racial inequities, and are counterproductive to achieving public safety. Accordingly, this report calls for an increase in the use of diversion and a reduction in the use of detention and adult prosecution for youth gun possession cases, in addition to increased investment in community-based initiatives. This report offers key research and evidence on the realities of gun violence, harms of punitive responses for gun possession cases, and effective community-based solutions for youth defenders to incorporate in their advocacy.