The Crime of Criminalizing Children

“[A]ge is not a determining factor in detention…age does not necessarily diminish the threat.” An unidentified Pentagon spokesperson was quoted saying this in an interview with the New York Times to explain, if not justify, the detention of children in United States facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It seems like the same logic may also reflect the thinking of many state and federal legislators when it comes to the detention of children here at home.

Although juvenile crime, like crime in general, has steadily declined in the United States over the past decade, there still seem to be more and more calls for zero tolerance when it comes to children, for harsher penalties, and most disturbingly, for more transfer of accused children from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal system. At the federal level, there is a bill pending in the Senate--S.155, the Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2005 – that would increase the number of children tried as adults and presumably subject the children found guilty to the federal prison system. Because this system is more geographically dispersed, this means a youth convicted and sentenced for robbing a post office in New York could serve his time in Leavenworth, Kansas, or Merion, Ohio, hundreds of miles from home. The House version of this bill has already been passed.

Children and youths are being criminalized at younger and younger ages and often for behavior that used to be handled in the principal’s office. Many Americans assume that only young thugs who commit the most violent of crimes are at risk of being tried as adults and incarcerated with adult prisoners. This is just not the reality: 90 percent of youths transferred to the adult criminal system nationwide are there because of a lowered age of adulthood in 13 states that forces the transfer even if the local prosecutor does not believe the transfer to be in the best interest of either the state or the child.

Studies show prosecuting young people as adults increases rather than reduces youth crime. Compared to young people prosecuted as juveniles, young people prosecuted as adults are more likely to commit a greater number of crimes upon release; commit more violent crimes upon release; and commit crimes sooner upon release. Young people incarcerated with adults are also five times as likely to be sexually assaulted by other inmates; twice as likely to be beaten by staff; 50 percent more likely to be assaulted with a weapon; and eight times as likely to commit suicide.

Why are we standing for this?

Treating child detainees as adults, even if they are suspected terrorists, has been declared a U.S. failure and human rights violation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Following the same policy in the United States is even more disturbing and unacceptable. The only universally guaranteed child right in the U.S. is a detention or prison cell after they get into trouble. Our values should demand better here at home and abroad.

Marian W. Edelman
September 9, 2005

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