De-Criminalizing Children
I so agree with this opinion. Children should not be sent to adult jails PERIOD. Nor should children be tried as adults. Children are children and the nature of a crime doesn’t change the fact they are children.
As many as 150,000 children are sent to adult jails in this country every year — often in connection with nonviolent offenses or arrests that do not lead to conviction. That places them at risk of being raped or battered and increases the chance they will end up as career criminals.
To fix this problem, Congress needs to properly reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974, under which states agreed to humanize juvenile justice policies in exchange for more federal aid. This act was largely bypassed in the 1990s when unfounded fears of an adolescent crime wave reached hysterical levels.
When it reauthorizes the law — it is already three years late — Congress should make it illegal for states to place children in adult prisons, perhaps with the exception of truly heinous criminals.
The House has yet to introduce a new bill; in the Senate, an updated version has yet to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee. The Senate bill is less than ideal, but it does encourage the states to de-emphasize the practice of detaining children in adult jails before trial and requires them to better protect young people who end up there. Several states have begun to reform their systems: housing young people in juvenile facilities — where they are better protected and can get mental health treatment — even if they have been convicted in adult courts. The current version of the law threatens states with loss of federal aid if they make that decision. The Senate bill would do away with that language.
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I am pasting a link here
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
to the front page of the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The front page has a picture of Michael Brewer, the 15 y/o boy who was douced with alcohol and set on fire by a group of his peers. [The front page changes often so the pix may not be there when you click on the link but on the sidebar of the paper the michael brewer story should be there.]
Those boys who set him on fire are sitting in jail, waiting to be tried as adults, except for jeremy jarvis, the 13 year old brother of Denver Jarvis the one teen who lit the fire (i think it has been reported) … those teens are criminals, criminals are usually people with very hardened hearts. Each of those kids has had a hard life … giving them candy after they nearly killed one of their peer, I think needs more than just a pat on the head and a, “don’t do it again” admonition. They need a good long time-out …adult jail is not a nice place and they will be around lots of bad company in it, they will probably learn lots of more bad stuff in it than what they have already learned … their fathers have been charged with domestic violence, and other violent crimes. Those kids are a bad bunch and I don’t see where not giving them a real long, hard punishment is going to do them, or the rest of society, any good. And yes, as I say this my heart twitches and hurts for what those boys have to face, but it also twitches and hurts for what Michael Brewer went through in agonizing minutes and will have to continue to go through for the rest of his life.