Trying children as adults

Residents of many jurisdictions across America have read news accounts like the one I read this morning in my local newspaper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, "When Junior Kills: Trying Children as Adults Leaves Prosecutors to Agonize." (Headline is from the print edition).

The context for this story is the tragic shooting and killing of a nine-year-old boy by his thirteen-year-old brother. The older boy also shot and wounded his mother.

Those who promote trying children as adults focus on the seriousness of the crime, and demand that the more serious punishments available in the adult criminal justice system are more appropriate than the rehabilitative measures that are more likely to guide juvenile justice programs.

The United States, however, leads the world in its imposition of harsh consequences on juvenile offenders. In 1990, the US was one of only two countries refusing to sign the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among its provisions is "No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The other country that failed to sign the convention is Somalia.

Over 2300 individuals in the United States are serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed as juveniles.

Children in adult prisons face treatment that can be far more onerous than that suffered by adult inmates. Reginald Dwayne Betts recently shared his experience as a juvenile offender placed in an adult prison at age 16. Betts' story has a happy ending, but I'd argue his eventual success as a recent graduate of the University of Maryland came about not because of his imprisonment as an adult but in spite of it.

So, prosecutors in Colorado Springs and elsewhere "agonize" over a decision that's been pretty well decided the world over--except in the United States and Somalia.