Young Souls, Dark Deeds
August 18, 2014
Introduction
Four Michigan boys were playing last week when a 12-year-old fatally stabbed a 9-year-old, witnesses said. The older boy called 911 and reportedly said: “I just stabbed someone. Come and get me. I want to die.” He has been charged as an adult with murder. In a Milwaukee suburb two 12-year-old girls face adult assault charges for stabbing a friend in a case bizarrely tied to an Internet figure.
Task:
After reading the following articles, respond to the prompt below with a well-organized and thoughtful essay. Be sure to use evidence from the articles and your own experience to support your claims. You have 60 minutes.
Prompt:
Is it sometimes proper to charge even pre-teens as adults, or is it unjust not to treat them as juveniles?
This introduction and prompt was published in The New York Times at www.nytimes.com in the Opinion Pages “Room for Debate.”
Some Young Offenders Are Beyond Redemption
Liz Hare is the president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers. Jennifer Bishop Jenkins is a member of the group's board of directors.
Updated August 19, 2014, 1:06 PM
As people whose loved ones were murdered by youths under the age of 18, it saddens us to see that the age of the offender often garners more attention than the crime itself. The word “child” is used sensationally, but these children commit some of the most horrific murders imaginable.
Each crime and criminal is unique, and each punishment should be decided on a case by case basis. The decision belongs to us all in a democracy – to the legislatures, the courts and the legal experts familiar with the facts of each case. Even removing the possibility of life sentencing for juveniles ties the hands of the courts and puts public safety at risk.
We must fix the problems in our society that lead to violence and we must constantly reform human institutions like the criminal justice system. But we must keep one important question in the front of our minds: Can children as young as 10 commit a cold, calculated murder? At such a tender age can an offender be so dangerous that they should be removed from society?
There is no denying that the answer sometimes is yes. Juvenile offenders often suffer from psychological and sociopathic conditions that will never allow them to rejoin society.
While juvenile advocates often note that a youth's brain is still developing, we all learn from an extremely early age that killing is wrong. Our organization takes no position on the age at which children could be tried as adults. But even an extremely troubled preteen can understand that taking a life is fundamentally unacceptable. While youths often make capricious decisions without regard to consequences, one cannot say that a preteen who contemplates and carries out the murder of another human being is never responsible.
We find it tragic that sometimes youths in our nation are capable of such brutal crimes. We find it tragic anyone is capable of them. While we as a society must look to prevention, we must not turn a blind eye to the issue at hand.
The United States separated the juvenile and criminal justice system in our nation over a century ago. What offender advocates claim is sentencing “children” as adults is largely a debate of semantics. We are not a faulty nation because we see that some offenders who commit brutal murders must be removed from society.
Well-funded youth advocates are working to make bringing juveniles who murder to adult court even harder, if not impossible. Often those who have paid the ultimate price, the victims, are overlooked.
A system where courts are allowed to look at all the factors in a crime, determining the best punishment and the best outcome for public safety, is a system that works.
This article was published in The New York Times at www.nytimes.com in the Opinion Pages “Room for Debate.”
Charged as Adults, Children Are Abandoned When They Could Be Saved
Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project and the author of "Race to Incarcerate."
August 18, 2014
A terrible tragedy has taken place in Michigan, with a 12-year-old boy accused of killing his 9-year-old companion. The decision to try such cases in adult court raises two fundamental questions. First, is this a reasonable course of action when the defendant is just a child, and second, what would the larger community gain by doing so?
The juvenile court was established over a century ago out of the basic recognition that children are different than adults. A 12-year-old lacks the maturity to appreciate the consequences of his actions and is not capable of aiding his attorney in presenting a legal defense. Moreover, the juvenile court has historically prioritized rehabilitating youthful offenders, no matter how serious the crime, because of the understanding that such change is uniquely possible for young people.
Some argue, though, that we need to “send a message” to the community that criminal behavior will not be tolerated. But is there a real risk that locking up the young boy in Michigan until he’s 21, as would be the case were he retained in the juvenile system, would somehow condone his alleged behavior? Further, it’s difficult to imagine that a trial in adult court would produce any deterrence benefits. It’s not as if other young boys are rationally calculating the relative number of years that they might be incarcerated before deciding to commit a senseless crime.
Frequently, a prosecutor will contend that an adult conviction allows a court to keep a young offender incarcerated after he turns 21, and conceivably for the rest of his life, for public safety purposes. But do we really believe that a decade behind bars is not a sufficient time to provide the assessment and treatment services necessary to aid troubled children?
As we consider how to handle the Michigan case, we would do well to note the words of the defendant just after the crime: “I just stabbed someone,” and “I want to die.” One cannot imagine a more profound cry for help. If we try to respond to that cry, we might have the chance to provide him with some semblance of a productive life after he serves time in the juvenile justice system. And in doing so, we could also try to understand how such a tragedy could have happened and what we can do to prevent the next one.
This article was published in The New York Times at www.nytimes.com in the Opinion Pages “Room for Debate.”