Juvenile Crime, Adult Time: Why are we so afraid of our kids? By Salim Muwakkil

A forward from Jackson Potter: a student activist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I hope you all will read this, its a very important expose.

Juvenile Crime, Adult Time: Why are we so afraid of our kids?

By Salim Muwakkil

On November 16, 13-year-old Nathaniel Abraham was convicted
of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a stranger two
years ago, when he was 11. Prosecutors had charged him with
first-degree murder after he reportedly confessed. An
African-American from one of Pontiac, Michigan's poorest
neighborhoods, Nathaniel is the youngest child in the nation to be
tried as an adult for a premeditated killing.

He will be sentenced on January 13 and faces a maximum sentence
of life in prison with the possibility of parole. He also could receive a
"blended sentence" and be jailed until 21, when his case would be
reviewed and he could either go free or get additional punishment. The
final decision lies with Judge Eugene Arthur Moore.

Nathaniel's trial was roundly condemned by human rights groups, and
he has become a symbol for those opposed to the growing trend in this
country to prosecute and punish juveniles as if they were adults. His
photograph graced the cover of an Amnesty International report that
said his trial "makes a mockery of justice and constitutes a violation of
international human rights standards for the protection of children."

In particular, Nathaniel's treatment scorns provisions of the U.N.
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, among other things,
provides that anyone under 18 shall not be punished with life
imprisonment without possible release. But the United States has not
ratified that convention, joining Somalia as the only other U.N. member
not to endorse the measure. In fact, the United States seems to be
moving in the opposite direction. In the past few years, 46 states have
changed their laws to allow juveniles to be tried as adults at the
discretion of a judge.

The United States also is among the select few nations that execute
child offenders. Amnesty International has documented 19 executions of
child offenders since 1990 in six countries: Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States (Yemen has since outlawed
the practice). Ten were killed in the United States, which "has earned
the shameful distinction of leading a tiny and dwindling group of
perpetrator states" that still execute children, in the words of a
December Amnesty report. Since October 1997, the report notes, all
four children known to have been put to death in the world were killed
in this country.

Why is the industrial world's most prosperous nation so afraid of its
kids? This question is even more poignant considering the fact that the
whole idea of a juvenile justice system was first put into practice a
century ago in the United States. The first true juvenile court was
established in 1899 in Cook County, Illinois. It was founded on the
principle that since children are not mature--physically, emotionally and
intellectually--they should not bear the same statutory responsibility as adults.

These days, however, that notion seems increasingly quaint. Legislators
all along the political spectrum are more willing to sentence juveniles
to "adult time for adult crime." Why? One reason is the association of
youth violence with minority--particularly African-American--children.
Perhaps the most salient culprit in this social perception are the major
media. "The media are whipping up public fear and this is correlating
with the demand for these ineffective, very expensive crime policies that
we see proliferating around the country," says Robin Templeton, who
heads a Pacific News Service program for youth in the Bay Area. "We
have to understand, I believe, that fear of crime is good for media
business. And, two, that when media whip up public fear, it creates this
demand for ineffective policies."

Templeton traces the trend for harsher juvenile penalties back to the
"superpredator" thesis of former Princeton professor and current
Brookings Institute ideologue John Dilulio. Combining demographic
projections with his notion that institutions that produce decent
character are disintegrating, Dilulio forecast a "rising wave of
superpredators" primed to prey on society like never before. Dilulio's
1996 book Body Count, which he co-authored with former Drug Czar
William Bennett and John P. Walters, warned of thickening ranks of
juvenile sociopaths, "radically impulsive, brutally remorseless
youngsters, including ever more pre-teen-age boys." Dilulio further
described these predators as "fearing neither the stigma of arrest, pains
of imprisonment nor the pangs of conscience."

The alarmist tone of this conservative tome echoed in Congress, where
Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum introduced the "Violent Youth
Predator Act," which called for confining children as young as 13 with
adult offenders, denying federal funds to states that do not try
13-year-olds as adults and abolishing the federal agency charged with
preventing juvenile crime. The bill, which is still being considered, has
since been given a less hysterical name, but the stringent provisions remain.

The environment Dilulio describes seems to fit the media portrayals of
the inner city, and there's little doubt that there is a racial dimension to
the anti-juvenile legislation now being passed so readily across the
country. Amnesty International reported last year that black children
comprise only 15 percent of the population ages 10 to 17, but account
for 50 percent of cases transferred by juvenile courts for trials in adult
criminal courts.

The sentencing of children to death also reflects a pervasive pattern of
racial discrimination. Two-thirds of the juveniles on Death Row are
either black or Hispanic, while two-thirds of the victims are white,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. "The real driving
factor is the race of the victim," says Victor Streib, a professor of law
at Ohio Northern University who has been tracking the number of
juveniles sentenced to death over the past 25 years. He says that
people of color are at least four times more likely to be executed.

In the 20th century, 75 percent of all juvenile offenders executed were
African-Americans, as was every child executed for rape, according to
research conducted by the National Coalition To Abolish the Death
Penalty. Of the nine known cases where girls were executed, eight
involved African-Americans. The other was an American Indian.

Juvenile executions in the United States began in Massachusetts'
Plymouth Colony in 1642 when Thomas Graunger, 17, was executed
for reportedly having sex with animals. Of the 19,200 executions held in
the United Sates since 1608, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center, 356 have been juvenile offenders. The youngest
person ever to be executed was a 10-year-old Cherokee Indian boy,
who was hanged in 1885. Since World War II, the youngest was
14-year-old George Stinney, who was electrocuted in 1944 in South
Carolina.

Over the years, however, a growing body of research and medical
advances demonstrated the futility of punishing children like adults, and
the United States (along with most other industrialized and developing
countries) turned away from those primitive customs. But the startling
crime increase in America's inner cities that accompanied the influx of
addictive drugs and divestment of resources convinced legislators to
revive atavistic practices. More recently, the series of terrifying school
shootings has triggered a rush to lower the eligible age for the death
penalty in many states.

Florida leads the nation in transferring juvenile delinquents to adult
criminal court. But according to a recent report in the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel, studies have shown that young offenders sent to adult
prison "commit more serious crimes quicker and more often after their
release than similar offenders who remain in the juvenile system." While
research is still thin, it's logical that exposing impressionable youth to
hardened criminals in prison environments would produce more youth
with criminal aspirations. "The idea that there is some sort of
superpredator out there is largely a myth," Florida Atlantic University
criminologist Randy Bazemore told the Sun-Sentinel. "But if you wanted
to create a superpredator, you couldn't do any better than taking
14-year-olds and locking them in prison with other criminals."

The creation of the juvenile court a century ago was based on the notion
that children are not just little adults, but people who comprehend the
world--and think and act--differently. Lacking a perspective deepened
by experience, they often fail to weigh risks and consequences and are
readily influenced by peers. The most significant difference, however, is
that they are redeemable and amenable to positive change.

By deserting this understanding of juvenile behavior in favor of the
"superpredator" thesis, American leadership is revealing the hollowness
at its core. Americans seem increasingly alienated from their children.
>From the sound of things, we intend to keep it that way.

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times.

And this at http://www.chicagoreporter.com

The Reporter Found:

Number of whites shot and killed by Chicago
police from 1990 to 1998: 12
Number of blacks: 82
Number of Latinos: 16
(March 1999)

Mortality rates per 100,000 African
Americans in Chicago in 1997: 858
Rates for whites: 468
Rates for Latinos: 463
(April 1999)

Percentage of Robert Taylor residents who
want to move into the private housing market
using federal Section 8 subsidies, according to
the Chicago Housing Authority: 85 to 95
Percentage who want Section 8, according to
a survey conducted by tenants: 12 (June 1999)

Average monthly income for a vendor of
Streetwise, Chicago's newspaper for the
homeless, in 1998: $258.
Average monthly income in 1993: $312
(October 1999)

Percentage of black children living in
unlicensed foster care home: 80
Percentage of white children: 13
(October 1999)