Issues
Juvenile Justice
Years of inadequate public investment have left Utah families struggling with many unmet needs. Our schools require better funding to hire more teachers, counselors, and nurses. We need affordable child care for both our cities and rural areas, along with affordable housing, cleaner air, and much more.
So why are our state leaders so determined to eliminate the primary source of funding for our public education system and other community services that help kids and their families?
Between 2018 to 2024, the state legislature cut the state income tax four times, from 5% to 4.55%. Our leaders act like they are doing us all a favor, reducing our income taxes by a few dozen dollars each year - but these seemingly small cuts have resulted in an annual revenue loss of over $800M.
Now, Utah’s legislative leaders are clear about their intentions to eliminate the income tax entirely.
“Ultimately what they (legislative leaders) want to do and what I want to do is get rid of the income tax completely.” - Governor Spencer Cox, December 2023 |
“I’ve said forever, if there is a way, we’d like to try to actually remove the income tax.” - Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, March 2024 |
“I want to focus on continuing to reduce income tax. Let’s also continue to have the discussion on getting rid of the income tax all together.” - Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, January 2024 |
However extreme and unrealistic these plans might seem, don’t doubt that they will try to do it. This year’s Interim Study Items include studying alternatives to the income tax.
The Consequences
Eliminating the income tax in Utah would further reduce funding for essential services, leading to devastating cuts affecting education, healthcare, and social services. This could mean decreased compensation for educators, fewer family resources, and longer wait times for assistance. The majority of Utahns do not want lower taxes if it means lower-quality services. Income tax cuts don’t make states more prosperous or competitive, and they don’t help families make ends meet.
Proponents of eliminating the income tax have yet to propose any viable plan to replace the enormous revenue loss that will follow. Only one state, Alaska, has ever eliminated its income tax, and it did so only after striking oil.
An Unfair Tax System
A fair tax system relies on a balanced approach, combining property tax, sales tax, and income tax to ensure stability, fairness, and responsiveness. The income tax is meant to represent the leg of fairness, ensuring that wealthy households pay their fair share.
Eliminating the income tax does not ensure that large corporations and the wealthiest residents pay their fair share in taxes. In fact, the benefits of income tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. Eliminating the income tax would provide a benefit of $121,514 to the top 1% of Utahns, but only provide $121 to the lowest-income 20%.
In recent years, wealthy corporations have enjoyed record profits, but aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. Further tax cuts mean they will pay even less. If the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share, we could expand opportunities to everyone, by investing in quality education, cleaner air, child care, and healthcare.
Utah's Values
Utahns believe in taking care of each other no matter what. But the recent years of revenue elimination have prioritized the wealthy and corporations instead. Now, over 60% of Utahns feel the state is on the wrong track, and that quality of life is worse than it was five years ago. Continuing to starve the state budget for critical public services, such as public education and highway safety, will not reverse that sentiment.
State leaders should focus on strengthening the vital services that make sure working people, small businesses, and families have the tools to build a good life. It's time to prioritize the well-being of all Utahns over short-sighted tax cuts for the wealthy.
Why We Advocate for Juvenile Justice Reform in Utah
Our team at Voices for Utah Children is proud to support juvenile justice reforms in Utah that are more effective and efficient for all involved. Recently, we’ve actively engaged in advocacy for reform since 2016, when state leadership embarked on a full-scale evaluation of Utah’s juvenile justice system at that time.
As the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government convened a wide-ranging group of experienced professionals and system experts, Voices joined with multiple other community-based non-profit organizations to articulate “Guiding Principles for Juvenile Justice Reform in Utah.”
Our number one guiding principle for reform was to “promote the critical role of early, non-criminal-justice intervention in the lives of young people, for the purpose of avoiding future justice involvement.”
This principle leads us to approach juvenile justice policy analysis and advocacy not by asking, “What is wrong with these kids?” but by asking, “What is going on with these kids?”
The vast majority of young people engaged in misconduct are acting out due to underlying issues that have not been addressed, such as:
- Serious childhood trauma such as sexual, physical and emotional abuse, including harms caused by another child;
- Undiagnosed and unsupported learning disabilities or mental health issues;
- Homelessness and housing insecurity;
- Family disruptions resulting in lack of support and supervision, such as substance abuse by primary guardians or absence of caring adults due to refugee or immigration status;
- Food insecurity and other poverty-related challenges; and more.
Why Early Intervention?
Ensuring early intervention is the most cost-effective and productive way to ensure that children never engage in criminal activity to begin with. This is the best path not only for a young person who might have otherwise harmed other people and their own community, but for those who might have been harmed.
(From Utah Juvenile Justice & Youth Services FY2022 Presentation)
Our communities are safest when children don’t act out in the first place. That is one reason that our organization advocates so strenuously for all Utah children to have access to food, shelter, health care and early education opportunities. These are preventative factors.
We also advocate for public policies that engender greater stability in the homes of young people, so they have fewer risk factors for antisocial behavior. Such policies include cash assistance for struggling families with children, access to health care for adults in the household, and help finding and paying for quality childcare so parents can work.
Harshly punishing young people with hundreds of hours of community service, fines they can’t pay, or isolation in a locked detention facility with other troubled children does not cultivate a sense of accountability and remorse.
In fact, over-punishment can actually make children more likely to reoffend, which is terrible for public safety.
Providing early access to interventions for young people who are struggling produces much better results. Harsher penalties also do not actually help those harmed by a youth’s antisocial behavior. A better approach is to ensure that as many young people as possible have their basic needs met, so their reasons for acting out are greatly diminished.
Children Are Not Adults
The juvenile justice system is structured differently than the adult criminal justice system, because children are not the same as adults. Research from the past several decades shows that the brains of most young people do not stop growing and developing until they are in their mid-20s. For this reason, our legal system has chosen to approach juvenile justice differently, with a greater emphasis on intervention and rehabilitation.
Most teenagers get into trouble for something during their formative years. Shoplifting, sexting, experimenting with drugs, getting in physical fights and skipping school are common mistakes made by young people finding their way into adulthood. Penalties for children should take into account that almost every human being does “dumb stuff” while growing up. Over-criminalization of these behaviors do not prevent young people from getting lured into them. Teenagers rarely know the legal penalties for their misconduct, and they lack the judgment to fully weigh how their future will be impacted by their behavior.
Disparities in the System
One serious issue that juvenile justice reform in Utah still has not been able to address, are the dramatic racial disparities that occur at each step of our juvenile justice system.
Research shows that children of color are much more likely to receive harsh penalties for misconduct than their white peers. What is understood as “age appropriate acting out” when a white child does it, is more often interpreted as “evidence of criminal character” when that very same behavior is exhibited by a child or color.
(From Striving for Racial Equity in Utah's Juvenile Justice System, 2020)
We object to policy proposals structured around harsh penalties, because we know those penalties are much more likely to hurt children and families of color, due to persistent racial injustice in our society. We believe that moving forward in a different way offers the best chance to address these disparities.
A Better Way Forward
Not all misconduct can be addressed by low-level interventions. Some children cause serious harm to others. There are children who leave families mourning and in pain. Taking a life, or perpetrating sexual abuse, are serious crimes for which our most serious interventions, including detention and secure care, should be reserved. Those who are hurt by serious offenses deserve real support, such as counseling and financial support, not just dramatic penalties that risk creating public safety issues for others in the future.
We try to advocate for policies that are shaped by the most up-to-date research, expert recommendations and actual data. Sometimes, this information changes, and we must reshape the ways in which we pursue the most positive outcomes for children.
(From 2023 Juvenile Reform Report, System Trends 2023 Juvenile Reform Report, System Trends)
Our state’s own research shows that the “old way” of doing things is unnecessarily expensive, is ineffective at reducing reoffending, and is more likely to engender resentment than remorse. Going backward will not help Utah children. We have to keep moving forward, with new knowledge and best practices, in order to best serve our kids.
If you have questions about this blog post, please contact or anna@utahchildren. Annual Juvenile Reform Reports can be accessed through our state's Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice website here.
A Rough Legislative Session for Utah Kids (Again)
The 2024 Utah Legislative Session ended at midnight on Friday, March 1. For the Voices for Utah Children team, this session included supporting a lot of community engagement, working hard to protect the programs that protect Utah kids, and trying not to get distracted by outlandish efforts to "solve" problems that don't actually exist in Utah.
As usual, there were many, many missed opportunities for state leaders to improve the lives of Utah kids. Nonetheless, we managed to pull off some great victories - as always, in partnership with many supportive community members, our great partner organizations and supportive public servants.
We hosted six different public engagement events at the Capitol over seven weeks. Working closely with our community partners, we stopped some truly terrible legislation that literally threatened the lives of Utah kids who rely on Medicaid and CHIP. Thanks to many supportive child care professionals and working parents, we kept Utah's child care crisis in the media spotlight throughout the session.
For a deeper dive into our efforts in various policy areas, as well as a recap of what happened to the many different bills we were tracking, check out the virtual booklet below!
