Kids in Jail
BY BENJAMIN SZANTON
There are many milestones in the lives of kids growing up in Missouri. They learn to ride a bike, head off to kindergarten and graduate elementary school. Then, with their twelfth birthday, they reach a big one: the ability to be charged as adults by their state’s criminal justice system.
States have different standards for when kids may be considered adults in the eyes of the law. Several have no minimum at all. Almost everywhere in the country, however, one thing is consistent. Individuals under eighteen may be charged and convicted as adults. Two states, North Carolina and New York, actually mandate it for all 16-year-olds.
The law as it stands subjects hundreds of thousands of children to the brutal life of an adult prison, an environment where they are the easiest targets for sexual abuse. Largely as a result of their vulnerability, they are 36% more likely to kill themselves in adult jail than in a juvenile detention center. Never mind that many teenagers in trouble with the law have already experienced a pattern of abuse. A study in the early 2000s found that while people who were abused growing up tend to get into legal trouble later, they are far more likely to get arrested in the years soon after the abuse — 59% more likely as a juvenile compared to 28% as an adult. Of kids who go to adult prison, 66% have at least one psychiatric disorder.
Going to jail as a child also leaves a person with a permanent criminal record for a crime he or she committed before becoming fully mature. Under the laws of many states, if a child is ever convicted as an adult, regardless of the crime, and, in some states, even if he is not convicted, he must always be considered an adult from then on. In many cases, the typical privacy rights given to minors in court are also waived when they are tried as adults, meaning that even if not convicted, their identities may be public. And in a system that generally leaves the decision to charge a child as an adult in the hands of a prosecutor or a judge, minorities end up overrepresented in the cases.
But the main reason that this justice system is unjust is simple: if somebody is legally considered a child in every other context, if they are not allowed to consume alcohol or tobacco, serve in the army, get a tattoo, sign legal documents or vote, they should not be allowed to go to jail as an adult. Eighteen may seem like an arbitrary age to be an adult, and it is. A 12-year-old has been scientifically shown to have a substantially reduced capacity to plot a crime or understand the justice system. I will readily believe that the differences between a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, however, are minimal. But that argument could apply to granting any right to those under eighteen. Why should going to jail be a more important right to our society than any other? Eighteen is where we as a society have drawn the line, and wherever the line is drawn, we must stick to it.
Seventeen-year-olds can be sent to the juvenile system, where people are often held until they are 21 anyway. In the cases of the most serious crimes, perhaps they could delay their adult sentences until they actually become adults. At the very least, it would allow them the chance to avoid spending any of their childhood in probably the worst possible place for children. Regardless of whom you consider an adult, you will run into the problem of underage people committing crimes that seem too severe to have been committed by children.
Think about this for a moment: we as a society believe that leaving a nine-year-old child in a park unsupervised is potentially a crime. Such was the case for Debra Harrell, a North Augusta, South Carolina, woman who was arrested for allowing her daughter to spend her mother’s work shift at a local playground while carrying both a cell phone and a house key. For better or for worse, a decent portion of society believes that no nine year old is mature enough to be allowed to ever be unsupervised in public by their parents. And yet, if the girl had committed murder while at the playground, she could have been charged as an adult under South Carolina law.
No other country in the world sends underage defendants to prison on life sentences without the chance of parole—despite a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that made the practice illegal, the United States currently has more than 2,500 people convicted as juveniles now spending the rest of their lives behind bars. It is a system which would not be morally justifiable even if it made society safer. Studies, however, have not shown any effect on reducing crime, with the former child inmates potentially ending up more likely to commit repeat offenses. Kids should not be in jail. Our system must be changed.