Grappling with age of adult trial

[flashl]

GREENSBORO - At what age should a teenager accused of a crime be tried as an adult? That the answer is far from simple was very clear Thursday at a gathering in Greensboro of people involved with juvenile justice from across the state.

North Carolina is one of just two states in which 16-year-olds are routinely tried as adults. Some recent studies have called for raising the cutoff age to 18, and the legislature might consider a change in the law next year.

Supporters of raising the age, including the child advocacy group Action for Children North Carolina, say doing so would enable troubled teenagers to find the help they need to get on the right track instead of being thrown into an adult system where the likelihood of being a repeat offender increases. Because adolescent brains are still developing, teenagers are more likely to succumb to peer pressure, but they also have the greatest chance to be rehabilitated, the group said in a December report.

Those against raising the cutoff age say it would be expensive, would overburden the criminal justice system and would increase the chance teenagers are not adequately punished for serious crimes.

...

Raising the cutoff age, he said, would bog down crime investigations, because investigators must obtain parental consent to question underage suspects.

News Observer

Well, that says it all. The purpose of trying teenagers as adults is to bypass parental consent. Guess, which demographics being adversely affected? Life-without-parole for youths hits minorities hardest

The Risks Juveniles Face When They Are Incarcerated With Adults

Close to a century ago, the juvenile justice system was developed because children were subjected to unspeakable atrocities in adult jails, and were returned to society as hardened criminals. As the system developed, it became clear that housing young offenders and adult prisoners together was self-destructive and self-defeating.

...

In a recent full page advertisement, sheriffs, district attorneys and legal professionals explained why they think the proposed legislation will make their jobs more difficult: "lock up a 13-year old with murderers, rapists and robbers, and guess what he'll want to be when he grows up?"

Even John DiIulio, head of the conservative Council on Crime in America - a group that has provided much of the statistical and (flawed) analytical support for the juvenile crime bill - doesn't think locking children up with adults is a good idea.

DiIulio wrote in The New York Times that "(m)ost kids who get into serious trouble with the law need adult guidance. And they won't find suitable role models in prison. Jailing youth with adult felons under Spartan conditions will merely produce more street gladiators."

Whenever there is a discussion topic that raises the question about the intellect or 'dumbness' of today’s' youth, there are hundreds of 'amen' postings.

I have a question.

How 'dumb' are adults who ignore a century worth of historical information about jailing youth in adult facilities who then claim to be surprised when they produce 'street gladiators'?

[acmavm]

1. First, I have a question for you. One that needs answered before anyone

can go anywhere on this subject:

What do you do with juvenile killers? Do you let them out at a magic age, like whatever is considered the age of majority where they committed their crime? Or do they understand that there is REAL punishment for ending the existence of another human being?

Crimes against property aren't that important. Unless someone dies during that crime. But crimes against property aren't the real problem in this issue. Nor (at least in my opinion) are drug offenses.

But we have a lot of savagae little boogers running around out there. How do you think they should be treated?

[Sadie4629]

3. I don't have an answer--

--just wanted to let you know I agree with you.

Part of the problem with the "savage little boogers" (LOL!) is that their problems generally don't start with murder. They've most likely been in trouble of varying degrees of seriousness for at least a couple of years. Maybe some of those minor offenses and property crimes need to be dealt with in a more serious manner, even if it's only counseling for vandals (just as an example.)

[flashl]

4. To my knowledge ... Juvenile killers are NOT being rotated back into society, but

there are thousands of juveniles in assembly line fashion diverted into adult court, everyday, mainly to lower costs of maintaining two criminal justice systems.

Even when juveniles are maintained in a separate system, they exist in the American version of Abu Graib. There was no significant public outcry or alarm after recent Congressional hearings and reports of deaths, beatings, brutality, rapes, etc. in juvenile boot camps across the country. These angry juveniles, sooner or later, are returned to society.

This society, literally, manufactures thousands of the criminals they claim that they fear.

[Sadie4629]

5. I think your knowledge is incomplete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Johnson_(murderer)

"Mitchell Johnson (born August 11, 1984) is an American murderer. Johnson, just thirteen years old at the time, along with middle school classmate Andrew Golden, who was eleven, ambushed teachers and fellow students in the backyard of Westside Middle School during the Jonesboro massacre in Jonesboro, Arkansas on March 24, 1998. They murdered four young girls and a teacher, also wounding ten people.

-snip-

Release
Johnson was released on August 11, 2005, on his 21st birthday. He spent less than 2 years in jail for each murder that he committed. <1> He is allowed to buy and own firearms. However, in interviews with Johnson's mother, she has said that Johnson plans to leave Jonesboro and become a Baptist minister. Golden was released on May 25, 2007.


Conviction on gun charge
On January 1, 2007, Johnson was arrested after a traffic stop in Fayetteville, Arkansas on misdemeanor charges of carrying a weapon — a loaded 9 mm pistol — and possession of 21.2 grams of marijuana. Though the van Johnson was riding in was registered to him, the driver was 22-year-old Justin Trammell. Trammell and Johnson reportedly met at Alexander Youth Services correctional facility in Alexander, Arkansas., where Trammell was incarcerated after pleading guilty to the 1999 crossbow murder of his father, a crime committed when Justin Trammell was 15 years old. The pair are roommates and provided officers with the same Fayetteville address.

Trammel was cited for careless driving and released. Johnson was arrested for possession of marijuana and a loaded weapon and later released on a $1,000 bond. He had a court appearance on Jan. 26, 2007 at the Washington County, Arkansas. courthouse. <2>

Johnson was indicted by a federal grand jury on October 24, 2007 for possession of a firearm while either a user or addicted to a controlled substance. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Arkansas reports Johnson pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5,000 bond. He will also be monitored by the U.S. Probation Office. Johnson's trial date is on January 28, 2008. If convicted of all charges, he faces ten years in prison.

On January 29, 2008, Johnson was found guilty on a charge of possessing a weapon while being a drug user. His sentencing is set for March 19, 2008. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years, which is 2 years longer than the sentence that he received for the 5 murders. <1>"

[flashl]

6. The release of one juvenile is not justification to continue support of a broken system ...

Juvenile Arrests : 2006

Q: How many arrests are made of persons under age 18?
A: The 2.2 million arrests of juveniles in 2006 was 24% fewer than the number of arrests in 1997.

Q: What is the trend for age-specific arrest rates for Violent Crime Index offenses?
A: Violent Crime Index arrest rates were higher in 2001 than in 1980 for all adult age groups - for juveniles ages 15-17, 2001 rates were below the rates in 1980.

The peak year for juvenile Violent Crime Index arrest rates was 1994. Between 1980 and 1994, arrest rates for youth ages 15-17 increased an average of 62%. In comparison, the rates increased more for adults in their thirties. More specifically, the rates increased 72% for adults ages 30-34 and 68% for those ages 35-39.

. Between 1994 and 2001, violent crime arrest rates declined for all age groups, but the declines were greater for juveniles than for adults. More specifically, the rates dropped 43% for youth ages 15-17, compared with 23% for adults ages 18-24, 27% for those ages 25-29, and 19% for those ages 30-39.

. Between 1980 and 2001, the Violent Crime Index arrest rates for youth ages 15-17 decreased 8% and the rates for adults increased. More specifically, the rates increased 7% for adults ages 18-24, 9% for adults ages 25-29, 28% for those ages 30-34, 47% for those ages 35-39, and 46% for thoses ages 40-44. Even the arrest rates for adults ages 60-64 increased 9%.

Internet citation: OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book.

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GAO study reveals boot camp 'nightmare'

The GAO report is here (pdf).

WASHINGTON — The first federal inquiry into boot camps and wilderness programs for troubled teens cataloged 1,619 incidents of abuse in 33 states in 2005, a congressional investigation out today reveals.

The study, by the Government Accountability Office, also looked at a sample of 10 deaths since 1990 and found untrained staff, inadequate food or reckless operations were factors. In half of those cases, the teens died of dehydration or heat exhaustion, the GAO says.

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Juvenile justice is broken it is overburdened and underfunded.

Jacksonville juvenile Court Judge A.C. Soud said, "Our system is breeding homegrown terrorists. Our community's in danger." ... "We cannot arrest our way out of this problem," said Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford. "We've also got to focus on ... intervention and prevention."

...

In 1992, State Attorney Harry Shorstein declared the juvenile justice system functionally and financially bankrupt and began aggressively charging repeat teen offenders as adults ... Department of juvenile Justice spokeswoman Tara Collins said the department spends about 9 percent of its budget on prevention programs ... Successful programs have been cut ... Lisa Steely, chief of the juvenile division in the Public Defender's Office, said the juvenile justice department lacks the resources for sufficient aftercare.

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Regarding Johnson, not all teen walk....

FRONTLINE: when kids get life| PBS


The United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows children under 18 to be sentenced to life without parole. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report that more than 2,000 inmates are currently serving life without parole in the United States for crimes committed when they were juveniles; in the rest of the world, there are only 12 juveniles serving the same sentence, according to figures reported to the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[lligrd]

2. It Is Ludicrous To Try A Juvenile As An Adult

You can's claim someone is a juvenile for most purposes but and adult when it suits you without being a hypocrite.

If you have a problem with the juvenile penalties, change them.

[acmavm]

7. Change them? The community has to go to court to FIGHT to get

justice in some cases. There are reasons that juvenile convicted of murder should be treated with compassion and understanding. And then there's some who should just receive the same treatment that they gave their victims.

Juvenile Serial Killer Remains in Prison
By HELEN O'NEILL, AP Special Correspondent

Saturday, December 15, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/12/15/national/a111618S73.DTL

They called him Iron Man, a hulking teenage football player with a baby face and winsome smile who lived with his parents in a small ranch house in the Buttonwoods section of town.

Then, one summer night in 1987, Craig Price crept across his neighbor's yard, broke into a little brown house on Inez Avenue and stabbed Rebecca Spencer 58 times. She was a 27-year-old mother of two. He was 13.

Two years passed before Price struck again.

Joan Heaton, 39, was butchered with the kitchen knives she had bought earlier that day. The bodies of her daughters, Jennifer 10, and Melissa 8, were found in pools of blood, pieces of knives broken off in their bones; Jennifer had been stabbed 62 times.

Buttonwoods was paralyzed. Police combed the streets. Neighbors padlocked their doors. The Heaton house was just a few hundred yards from the Spencer home and the question hung thick over the tidy, working-class neighborhood: What kind of monster was living in their midst?

The answer came two weeks later.

Price was a wisecracking 15-year-old who had been in minor trouble for petty burglaries — "thieving" he called it — but who seemed friendly to neighbors and was always surrounded by friends.

Police had become suspicious after Price lied about a deep gash on his finger. They knew from the crime scene that the killer had cut himself. A bloody sock-print matched Price's size-13 feet. They found the knives in his backyard shed.

At the police station, his mother sobbing softly beside him, Price calmly confessed to the four murders.

Yet even as police and prosecutors celebrated the capture of Rhode Island's most notorious serial killer, they were reminded of a grim reality.

In five years, Price would be free to kill again.

Price was a month shy of his 16th birthday. As a juvenile, he would be released from the youth correctional center when he turned 21 — the maximum penalty under Rhode Island law at the time. His records would be sealed. The 5-foot-10 inch, 240-pound killer would be free to resume his life as if the murders had never occurred.

-MORE-

[flashl]

8. Again, fear memes about one or two cases is not justification to maintain a broken system. nt

[acmavm]

9. Ah, and here we have yet once again someone spouting that overused

word 'meme' thinking that will make it look like they have a point.

[flashl]

10. My points are in the original post, posts 4 and 6

which provides youth crime index, summary from GAO report describing the results of unregulated juvenile boot camps, information from the Department of juvenile Justice on the percentage of spending of prevention / aftercare programs, an observation from a juvenile justice and sheriff, and Frontline coverage of juveniles in prison. There is consensus from these professionals that the juvenile justice system as it exists today is broken.

My responses are hardly a broad-brush approach by pointing to single instance to color an entire system.

[flashl]

11. A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders

A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders

When Jacob Rivera, 15, was resentenced in May on an assault conviction, he felt he had received a “blessing.”

Only months earlier he had been sentenced to a year in state custody, and he had already spent weeks bouncing between a juvenile detention center in the Bronx and a residential treatment campus upstate. Two of his older siblings had spent time in those facilities and, he said, had “come out a mess.” He could see his future.

But the court gave him a second chance because his case had not been properly reviewed for inclusion in a new alternative sentencing program, which the city started in February 2007. The program, called the Juvenile Justice Initiative, sends medium-risk offenders back to their families and provides intensive therapy.

The city says that in just a year, it has seen significant success for the juveniles enrolled, as well as cost savings from the reduced use of residential treatment centers.

Under the program, Jacob went back home on probation, and he and his family were assigned a counselor, Eddy Lee, who visited the two-bedroom Bronx apartment that the teenager shares with his mother, Michelle Rivera, her husband, a younger brother and other relatives.
...

By the standards of juvenile justice, Jacob is a resounding success. And he is not alone. The city said that in the year since the program began, fewer than 35 percent of the 275 youths who have been through it have been rearrested or violated probation.

State studies found that more than 80 percent of male juvenile offenders who had served time in correctional facilities were rearrested within three years of their release, usually on more serious charges.

NY Times