Reply #74: Thanks for this post.

[JDPriestly]

I agree. The imprisonment of children is the most horrible of the crimes of the Bush administration.

As pro bono work, I used to visit children in the Juvenile Hall in my hometown. The conditions at the Juvenile Hall facilities (I visited a couple of different ones) were relatively comfortable considering the crimes committed by these children, which ran the gamut from nonviolent to very violent crimes. To think of a 15-year old kid at Guantanamo after seeing the she shame, fear and distress in the eyes of some of the children at the facilities I visited is just unbearable.

Yes, children do commit crimes even serious crimes, but they are, nevertheless, children. They do not understand fully the repercussions of their actions. They have not developed the judgment they need to make wise decisions. They are often responding to forces in their environment of peer pressure when they commit crimes. Guantanamo is not the answer, regardless of how hardened they appear to be.