American Children Trained To Be Criminals

The late 1990’s and well into the new millennium, a series of high profile incidents in which youth brought weapons to school with murderous intentions has had a lasting impact on how the United States perceives the criminal actions of it’s children.  A view developed within the public that “youth offenders are qualitatively different from previous generations in the viciousness of their crimes (Hoge, Pg. 15).”  In fact most state’s moved to simply begin trying children as adults in order to alleviate the public image of violent, murderous children overplayed and stereotyped by the media.  

                According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, beginning in 1992 until the end of the decade, 48 states and the District of Columbia overhauled their respective legal system’s to allow the prosecution of children as adults (Statutes).  In fact, only Nebraska and Wyoming chose to keep their juvenile courts in their original form.   As of 2007, over twenty states had laws which children as young as fourteen may be eligible for the Adult Criminal courts.  Colorado, Missouri, and Montana allow for children at the age of twelve; Kansas and Vermont allow for children as young as ten (Statutes.)

The legal term is a judicial waiver, it is the practice of a Juvenile Court justice to pass their duties on to Adult Criminal courts.  Florida is the most notorious state for dumping its children into the Adult Criminal courts.  Florida is one of several states which allows for prosecutors to suggest whether a child should be tried as an adult rather than the court or jury of the defendants peers.  Under Florida’s prosecutorial transfer statutes, the state consistently leads the nation in the incarceration of juveniles in adult penal systems.  In 2000-2001 Florida would send 486 youth to Adult prisons, by 2004-2005 the number would drop to 296 only to spike to 603 in 2008-2009 (Hernandez).  Moreover, a Human Rights Watch/Amnesty International report released in October of 2005 analyzed the trend of “Life Without Parole” sentences for children between the ages of 14-17.   Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, Illinois each had over one hundred children serving life sentences (Human Rights Watch, Appendix B). Pennsylvania , Louisiana, and Michigan each incarcerated over 300 children on LWP charges, while Florida remained close behind with 273.

                John DiIulio, a professor from Princeton authored a controversial paper titled How to Stop the Coming Crime Wave in 1996.  The essence of the work came to a statement in which DiLulio declares “by the year 2010, there will be 270,000 more juvenile super-predators on the streets than there were in 1990…” (Human Rights Watch, Background.)  Conservative pundits quickly caught onto DiLulio’s hysteria, driving the idea of “super-predators” through the public conscious in order to harden the criminal justice system.  The reality was that violent crime amongst juvenile’s has been steadily decreasing since the 1980’s despite a gradual increase in the disproportionate amount of minorities incarcerated compared to their white counter parts committing the same crime.  Moreover, the number of youth committing homicides in 2002 was comparatively low ranking alongside the year 1976 (Human Rights Watch, Background.)
                Risk factors become the primary goal in isolating and evaluating the child who commits violent crimes.  Issues like peer influence, paternal absence, inadequate educational and public institutions for juvenile’s create a distorted view when attempting to understand why youth commit crimes society generally associates as “adult actions (Hoge, Pg. 34).”  A New Zealand study conducted in 2004 followed 1,000 people over a 30 years period.  The results highlighted youth who are incarcerated earlier were labeled “’life-course persistent’ group who tended to offend more frequently, with greater behavioral diversity, and whose offending last well into adulthood (Hoge, Pg. 38).”  It is no secret that the United States is a capitalist Republic in which the pursuit of profit supersedes most notions of human dignity.  The reality is that we have a national incarceration rate of one person in prison per ninety-nine people.  The ability to segregate portions of our nation’s youth in order to prepare them for a long life behind bars is becoming a booming industry fully financed by the United States taxpayer dollar.
    
 

Work Cited

• Hernandez, Arelis R. “Cycle of Crime: Ever more young offenders sent to Florida adult courts.” 15 Oct. 2010. The Orlando Sentinel. ONLINE. 10 June 2011
• Hoge, Robert D, Nancy Guerra, and Paul Boxer. Treating the Juvenile Offender. New York: Guilford Press, 2008. HARDCOPY.
• Human Rights Watch “The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Children Offenders in the United States. Appendix D.” Publications: Reports. Human Rights Watch/Amnesty International, 11 Oct. 2005. ONLINE. 10 June 2011.
• Human Rights Watch “The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without Parole for Children Offenders in the United States. Background: Youth on Trial.” Publications: Reports. Human Rights Watch/Amnesty International, 11 Oct. 2005. ONLINE. 10 June 2011.
• “Statutes.” Ojjdp.gov. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, n.d. Web. ONLINE. 10 June 2011.