Children are Children…Unless They Commit a Crime!

A fourteen year old participates in a robbery, someone is shot and dies.  The State Prosecutor moves to try the teen as an adult.  He (or she) could be a fifteen, seventeen, or even a twelve or thirteen year old, same difference.  More often than not, the immediate and almost automatic response today is for prosecutors to attempt to try children and teenagers as adults when they have committed severe crimes, especially when it involves a death.

It stands to reason.  There is extreme pain, much agony and grief over the loss of a loved one, damaging consequences that last a lifetime.  This turns to anger and the desire for basic justice, if not out-and-out revenge.  And so, prosecutors and Victim Advocates want no mitigating circumstances to soften the verdict or lighten the penalty.  This is quite understandable.  But it is a contradiction to our society’s values respecting the status of children and our society’s expectation of real, authentic justice.

Over the past 25 years, children are increasingly being prosecuted as adults and thus being subjected to very harsh adult sentencing.  This ignores the medical/scientific fact that the mental/brain development of children and teens (yes, even eighteen and nineteen year olds) do not yet have the full mature capacity of adults.  That is to say that youth do not yet have the developmental capability of exercising mature adult judgment.  Yet when tried as an adult youth are being held accountable as if they were in fact complete mature adults, with an adult capacity for reasoning, emotional control, and mature responsible decision making.  This is simply not the case.

There are clear guidelines for insuring that adults are competent before they stand trial and are subjected to criminal prosecution.  This is not so with respect to youth and juvenile defendants—when their cases are moved to be tried as adults.  Because of the nature of youth, young people cannot be fairly prosecuted as adults.  This is why groups like the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) say that the practice of prosecuting anyone under the age of 14 as an adult should be totally banned across all states.

Yet, fourteen states in the U.S. presently have no minimum age for trying children as adults.  In some states, children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.  This is here in the U.S.!  Some states have set the minimum age at 10, 12, or 13.  For example, in the State of Florida a 12 year old boy is prosecuted as an adult and faces the possibility of life imprisonment without parole.  Our state of Pennsylvania is one of many that have no minimum age for being prosecuted as an adult.  This cannot be real and authentic justice. 

According to EJI, “Some 10,000 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.”  “As thousands of children have been transferred to adult courts for criminal prosecution, growing numbers of them have been automatically placed in adult jails and prisons.”

In the last three years, the Equal Justice Initiative has won three historic victories in the U.S. Supreme Court shielding children from death-in-prison sentences.  Sentences of life-imprisonment-without-parole, for children convicted of most crimes, has now been banned by the Supreme Court.  The Court also banned “mandatory life imprisonment without parole” for crimes committed by children.  Yet, many states continue to have no minimum age for the adult prosecution of children, making kids as young as 8 to 13 vulnerable to imprisonment with adult sentences that can mean decades of incarceration.

If you want to help create a more appropriate and responsible system of justice for children who are arrested and face adult prosecution, please visit the Equal Justice Initiative website at www.eji.org for more information and news on the latest developments.