Juvenile justice

Retrieved from InfoTrac Web: General Reference Center Gold.

 
Original Source:  Current Events, Jan 28, 2000 v99 i16 p2a.
 
Title:  ADULT TIME FOR ADULT CRIME?
 
Subjects:  Children - Cases
            Juvenile offenders - Laws, regulations, etc.
 
Electronic Collection:  A59186587
                   RN:  A59186587
 

Full Text COPYRIGHT 2000 Weekly Reader Corp.

BACKGROUND

Children in the United States who commit crimes may be dealt with in the
juvenile justice system. However, more and more kids are finding themselves
facing the adult criminal system for the crimes they commit.

Public views of juvenile offenders have been influenced by attention given to
high profile cases such as Nathaniel Abraham, Kip Kinkel, and Daphne Abdela.
Some experts warn, though, that the public need hot unreasonably fear juvenile
offenders because serious violence by juveniles actually dropped in the past
few years.

High Price?

Experts warn, however, that society pays a high price for youths who opt for a
life of crime and drug abuse. They say that for each lost youth, the American
public pays between $1.7 and $2.3 million tax dollars. The cost is figured by
including such factors as victim costs, criminal justice costs, offender
productivity loss, and drug treatment costs, among other things.

Facts About Juvenile Crime

Some facts about juvenile crime were recently released in a report called
"Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report." Here are some of those
facts:

* Juvenile violence peaks in the after-school hours on school days and in the
evenings on nonschool days.

* School crime was not uncommon, but fear kept few high schoolers home during
a typical month in 1997.

* Half of high school students who said they carried a weapon said they took
that weapon to school.

* Gang problems now affect more jurisdictions than ever before--including
rural and suburban areas.

* 54 percent of males and 73 percent of females who enter the juvenile justice
system never return on a new referral.

"Get Tough" Laws Lower the Age Kids Can Be Tried as Adults

On October 29, 1997, 18-year-old Ronnie Greene Jr. and two friends were just
finishing running some errands in Pontiac, Mich. The three men had left a
local convenience store when they heard a gun firing. Before they could react,
another bullet was fired. This one hit Greene in the head and killed him

Two days after the shooting, police arrested a suspect--11-year-old Nathaniel
Abraham. Abraham was tried as an adult for the shooting. On November 16, the
jury found Abraham, now 13, guilty. At the time CE went to press, Nathaniel
awaited a decision on his punishment.

Tougher Laws

Previous to 1996, violent young offenders in Michigan were automatically freed
from prison at age 21 by law. But under a law enacted only four months before
Nathaniel killed Ronnie Greene Jr., juvenile criminals in Michigan can be kept
behind bars for life. The law also reduces the age at which juveniles can be
tried as adults in Michigan. Being tried as an adult means juveniles can
receive longer sentences and might serve time in adult prisons instead of
juvenile detention centers.

According to legal experts. Nathaniel, at age 11, is the youngest person in
modern U.S. history to be charged as an adult with first-degree murder. (In
most states, first-degree murder means a person knowingly causes the death of
another after thinking about or planning the attack.) The jury convicted
Nathaniel of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. (Second-degree murder
generally means a person intends to do harm, but does not necessarily plan to
kill ahead of crime.)

Nathaniel's case has ignited a national controversy over the treatment of
young offenders. More and more states, such as Michigan, have passed "get
tough on crime" laws lowering the minimum age at which children who are
charged with serious crimes car be tried as adults. Critics say such laws
don't work. The laws don't work, they say, because they tend to put kids in
adult prisons with adult criminals. As a result, say critics, the kids reenter
society more violent and more dangerous than if they had been sent to juvenile
facilities. Supporters of "get tough" laws say that putting the most violent
kids out of circulation in adult prisons is the only way to keep them off the
streets. Such young criminals, say supporters, are already hardened offenders
and should be put in adult prisons.

A Troubled Life

Nathaniel Abraham never had an easy life. Soon after he was born, Nathaniel's
father abandoned the family. Nathaniel's mother, Gloria, struggled to make
ends meet in order to support Nathaniel and Iris two older brothers and one
older sister. Gloria Abraham worked nights as a laboratory technician, leaving
Nathaniel in the care of the older children. Nathaniel talked to 60 Minutes
correspondent Ed Bradley about life with his mother. Nathaniel said, "It was
hard because she wasn't ... at home ... it made me mad sometimes...."

When Nathaniel was 8, school officials determined that he had below-average
intelligence and difficulty controlling iris emotions. At the age of 9,
Nathaniel began acting out his anger in violent ways--getting into fights and
threatening other kids with weapons. By age 10, Nathaniel had 22 run-ins with
police for arson, assault, and breaking and entering. Police say that in one
violent incident, Nathaniel beat a 14-year-old child over the head with a
steel pipe.

When Nathaniel began getting into trouble, Gloria Abraham asked the police and
juvenile courts to intervene. Nothing happened. County officials and local
police now blame each other for the oversight.

In Nathaniel's trial, the boy's defense attorneys argued that the shooting of
Ronnie Greene was ail accident. They said that Nathaniel was shooting at some
trees with some friends when a bullet ricocheted off a tree and hit Greene.

Prosecutors, though, argued that Nathaniel told friends he had planned to
shoot someone, borrowed a gun, and bragged about the killing afterward.

The controversy in Nathaniel's case is not whether he killed a man, but
whether, as an 11-year-old, Nathaniel had the ability to understand and be
held accountable for his criminal actions.

Justice for Juveniles

The age at which children should be held responsible for their actions is an
issue that has been debated throughout U.S. history. In the United States
during the late 1700s and 1800s, laws stated that children under age 7 were
considered incapable of criminal intent. Therefore, if a child under age 7
committed a criminal act, he or she was automatically exempt from prosecution
and punishment. However, according to those laws, children over the age of 7
were treated the same as adults. Children were sentenced to prison or even put
to death if found guilty of serious crimes.

The result of such laws was that early juries often refused to convict
juveniles because of the harsh adult penalties that would follow.
Consequently, many violent juveniles were left at large to terrorize the
public. In the 1800s, reformers looked for ways not to imprison juveniles, but
to rehabilitate them--turn them away from a life of crime and mold them into
productive future citizens. Judicial reformers founded a juvenile justice
system entirely separate from the adult justice system. The first court in the
U.S. juvenile justice system was established just outside of Chicago, Ill., in
1899.

By 1925, all but two states had established juvenile justice systems. Rather
than merely punishing offenders as in the adult criminal justice system, the
juvenile system sought to turn troubled kids into productive citizens through
rehabilitation and treatment.

For the next 50 years, juvenile courts had control over what happened to
youths charged with violating laws. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, many
people feared that the incidence of violent crime among juveniles was rapidly
increasing and that the juvenile justice system was too lenient on young
offenders. Some states began passing laws giving prosecutors the ability to
try certain juvenile cases in adult criminal courts.

Changes in Texas

Between 1992 and 1997, 45 states passed laws making it easier to transfer
juvenile offenders from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal
justice system. Those laws passed despite the fact that serious violence by
juveniles actually dropped by 33 percent between 1993 and 1997.

Texas was one of the 45 states Sat adopted tougher policies toward juvenile
criminals. When George W. Bush ran for governor in 1994, he promised to
overhaul the state's juvenile justice system. After winning the election, Bush
fulfilled his promise, passing stricter laws to deal with young lawbreakers.
Bush said, "I want our kids to understand that if they choose a life of crime,
we with hold them accountable for their behavior."

Texas state representative Sylvester Turner disagreed with Bush. Turner said,
"They've transformed a system which was founded on the notion of
rehabilitation and turned it into a criminal-based, revenge kind of system."

RELATED ARTICLE: GROWING UP TOO SOON

During the 1990s, between 5,000 and 6,000 children were sent to adult prisons
each year. Below are profiles of a few children who committed crimes in the
United States. Read on to learn more about how the justice system dealt with
these kids.
Nathaniel Abraham
 
State: Michigan
Age Crime Committed: 11
Age Convicted: 13
Crime: Fatally shooting a stranger outside a convenience store
Sentence: Not yet determined
 
Daphne Abdela
 
State: New York
Age Crime Committed: 15
Age Convicted: 16
Crime: Involved in killing a 44-year-old man
Sentence: 39 month to 10 years in prison
 
Kip Kinkel
 
State: Oregon
Age Crime Committed: 15
Age Convicted: 17
Crime: Fatally shooting his parents at home and killing two
students at a Springfield, Oreg. high school.
Sentence: Life in prison
 
Donna Ratliff
 
State: Indiana
Age Crime Committed: 14
Age Convicted: 15
Crime: Killing her mother and sister after setting their house on
fire.
Sentence: 25 years in prison. She moved to a treatment center for
juveniles in 1999.

RELATED ARTICLE: ADULT, AS DEFINED IN EACH STATE

This map shows the minimum age at which juveniles can be treated as adults
under the law in 1997. Nearly half the states have no specific minimum age.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

What's Next for Nathaniel?

Nathaniel Abraham remains one of the youngest offenders to have first-hand
experience with "get tough" laws. Judge Eugene Moore, who presided over
Nathaniel's trial, now has three choices. He can sentence Nathaniel as an
adult, which means Nathaniel would serve time in a juvenile facility until his
21st birthday, then would be transferred to adult prison for the remainder of
his life. The judge can sentence Nathaniel as a juvenile, which means he would
serve time in a juvenile facility until his 21st birthday, then would be
freed. Or Moore can sentence Nathaniel to a "blended sentence," freedom at age
21 only if psychologists determine Nathaniel is not a threat to society.
Prosecutors have asked that Nathaniel be given a blended sentence,

A Good Decision?

Geoffrey Fieger, one of Nathaniel's defense attorneys, was outraged at the
jury's verdict. Fieger said, "If [Nathaniel is] locked up now for most of his
life, which [the jury has] provided the means to do, when he gets out ... he
will have been raised by the most hardened criminals on the face of the
world." Nathaniel's defense attorneys are planning to appeal the jury's
verdict of guilty to a higher court.

Other people, including Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor, think the guilty
verdict was justified. Murphy said on a TV talk show, "If [Nathaniel] had the
capacity to pull the trigger, he deserves to be where he is."

Meanwhile, Nathaniel awaits a decision that will affect the rest of his life.
When 60 Minutes correspondent Bradley asked the now convicted boy if he had
one wish, what it would be. Nathaniel responded, "To get out of here and go
home."

Consider This ... Should kids who commit serious crimes be charged as adults?
 
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