The Juvenile Offender Law
“…14 and 15 year-olds (at the time of their offenses) who are charged with any of the 17 designated felony offenses, and 13 year-olds charged with murder are excluded from juvenile court” (Kupchik, 2003).
Upon further investigation, I was only able to uncover 3 of the 17 offenses: Murder, robbery and assault. This sounds like it has something to do with common law, which consist of crimes that are inherently wrong. They carry the reputation of being the worst crime there possibly can be.
So what would be the benefit of transferring a juvenile to a criminal court? I do not think the reading answered this question. In criminal courts for juveniles there is a consensus that there should be easier sentencing, to make sure the juvenile gets another chance.
Prisons have a reputation for lacking adequate programs, so how would sending a juvenile to an adult facility be giving them another chance. Even if that particular state first required that the juvenile goes to a juvenile facility and transfers that person to an adult facility, there is a possibility of discrepancy arising in the type of counseling and attention he/she received. In the readings a point came up that programming in prisons is actually better than the stigma, but there is still an issue of availability. Residents in these facilities report better relation with juvenile facility staff than with adult facility staff. This goes back to the argument of do these kids need to be rehabilitated or simply locked up? According to the relations statement, it sounds like juvenile facilities may have rehabilitation practices imbedded at even the guard level. Granted, I have never worked in a juvenile facility or a prison, so all of my ideas are based on what I have read and the information I was exposed to during my undergrad in criminal justice – corrections.
“…14 and 15 year-olds (at the time of their offenses) who are charged with any of the 17 designated felony offenses, and 13 year-olds charged with murder are excluded from juvenile court” (Kupchik, 2003).
Upon further investigation, I was only able to uncover 3 of the 17 offenses: Murder, robbery and assault. This sounds like it has something to do with common law, which consist of crimes that are inherently wrong. They carry the reputation of being the worst crime there possibly can be.
So what would be the benefit of transferring a juvenile to a criminal court? I do not think the reading answered this question. In criminal courts for juveniles there is a consensus that there should be easier sentencing, to make sure the juvenile gets another chance.
Prisons have a reputation for lacking adequate programs, so how would sending a juvenile to an adult facility be giving them another chance. Even if that particular state first required that the juvenile goes to a juvenile facility and transfers that person to an adult facility, there is a possibility of discrepancy arising in the type of counseling and attention he/she received. In the readings a point came up that programming in prisons is actually better than the stigma, but there is still an issue of availability. Residents in these facilities report better relation with juvenile facility staff than with adult facility staff. This goes back to the argument of do these kids need to be rehabilitated or simply locked up? According to the relations statement, it sounds like juvenile facilities may have rehabilitation practices imbedded at even the guard level. Granted, I have never worked in a juvenile facility or a prison, so all of my ideas are based on what I have read and the information I was exposed to during my undergrad in criminal justice – corrections.
Race
This topic never fails to get me riled up when it comes to justice issues. I gathered the following information from the assigned readings:
Kupchik, 2003 – juveniles in criminal court
4% white (2% of the cases are convicted)
66% African American
30% Hispanic
Morreale, M.C., & English, A., 2004 – on March 15, 2004 juveniles on death row:
41% African American/Black (make up 6.8% of juvenile population)
21% Latino (make up 6.9% of juvenile population)
Kupchik, 2004 – Juveniles in adult facilities
No white juveniles were sent to adult facilities
These statistics prove that there are major issues with the criminal justice system. For a comparison, I looked up race rates in state prisons.
African American – 45.7%
White – 33%
Hispanic – 17.9%
Other – 3.4%
This information came from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics: Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1993. Although this information might seem dated, I can guarantee that if this information is not nearly the same, the disparity is worse.
So, what is the problem here? Are arresting officers racist and/or the courts racist? Or does it stem to racism that is imbedded in our society, concerning things like education. Whatever the answer is, what are we going to do to change it? Spending four years in a criminal justice bachelors program did not prove that the system was changing. When race issues came up, there was not a class discussion about it. In many of my professors’ opinion, the disparity is what it is. This is the type of training future police and correction officers are receiving. As long as this is happening, in my opinion, change is not in the near future.
Language
Anyone that has witnessed a real court session would probably agree that the legal process is confusing. This is one of the reasons we need lawyers. So, if adults can barley figure out what is going on, how would a juvenile?
What about our Miranda rights?
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you can not afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?
I am going to go ahead and assume that this is a statement we are all familiar with, be it our own experience or watching COPS; But what about a 14, 15, or 16 year old? Do juveniles know their rights? I think that extra steps should be taken in order to make sure juveniles understand their rights. Juvenile rights are especially during an interview/interrogation.
According to Owen-Kostelnik, J. et al., 2006, there are some major issues associated with the interrogation process. They presented a study that accused juveniles ages 12-16 of causing a computer to crash because they pressed the Alt key. Of the juveniles ages 12 and 13, 78% confessed. Of the 15 and 16 year olds, 72% confessed.
Clearly no real crime has been committed here, but it goes to show that adult intimidation can play a huge role in confessions.
The most shocking part of this study was that 2/3 or the 12 and 13 year olds and ½ of the 15 and 16 year olds just signed a confession with out asking any questions.
I am going to guess that the tactics used in this study are no where as tricky as what is used during real interrogations. According tot his article the widely accepted Reid method of interrogation does not deal with juveniles (even though they claim there is). So how could someone that is trained to get a confession from an adult, even know where to start with a juvenile?
I think that there should be special training required for juvenile interrogators. This is because wrongful convictions are a terrible thing. I think that one wrongfully convicted person is one to many. We can not rely on people who have no experience with juveniles to accurately determine if they committed the crime or not.
Death Penalty
Regardless if you are for or against the death penalty, the UN decided that executing anyone under the age of 18 is not something they support. Along with the United States, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen are the only countries in recent years that executed juveniles. These laws have since changed. I find it interesting that the United States was grouped in a category with some of these countries. I think that the US considers its self to be a dominate country, considering we have invaded to “help” (westernize?) many of these places.
Adults and juveniles, in my opinion, have something terribly wrong with them if they resort to 1st degree murder. I am not an expert, but I think that children are impressionable enough that through intense therapy they can change.
A Prosecutor in the New York criminal court for juveniles said about the death penalty, “The most fundamental failure of society to provide young people with the support that they need to grow up healthy, responsible, and productive lives” (Morreale, M.C., & English, A., 2004). I totally agree with this statement. I think juveniles need support from the system. This support should be in the form of intense rehabilitation and life skills training to ensure that this juveniles can survive in the real world, when they get the chance.
3 comments:
In reading the article by Aaron Kupchik, (2003) it is apparent that juvenile offenders are treated differently from adult offenders. Juvenile offenders undergo a lenient, rehabilitative prosecution, where the prosecution’s purpose is to adapt these youths to society. Additionally, Kupchik (2003) and other researchers (Kupchik 2007; Judge Foreman Lecture) imply that youth offenders can be transformed into law-abiding citizens through juvenile programs that favor rehabilitating youth offenders. This lenient position could result from views on the mental capacities of juveniles. Judge Foreman believes the adolescent brain is immature and will not fully develop until the body is twenty-five years old. Consequently, juveniles may not fully understand and recognize the consequences of committing a criminal act, hence the support for lenient, rehabilitative responses. In fact, the youth may not realize that his or her actions are illegal until arrested and presented before a judge. Making an argument, however, that a twenty-five year old offender should be tried in a juvenile court will also not have the same level of support because most have accepted eighteen as the point when adolescents become adults. Yet, even under eighteen, arguments on whether benefits from the juvenile system should be allocated to adolescents are challenged when the youth in question commits a serious crime. Severe offenses like rape, murder, drive-by shootings, and others persuade the public to favor harsh punishments even if the offender is under eighteen. The justice system has already manifested the prosecution of adolescents as adults by transferring them to the criminal courts, as will be discussed in the following paragraph.
Responses in transferring youth offenders vary: some court systems follow a formal and structured prosecution but executing a more informal, lenient sentencing; others follow a formal and structured system for both prosecution and punishment (Kupchik, 2003; Kupchik, 2007). For the latter, the youth is transferred to adult prisons whereas the former transfers the youth offenders to an isolated facility in the juvenile correctional facility (Kupchik, 2007). The former response seems to be a compromise between the expected criminal prosecution of youth offenders as adults and the wanted rehabilitative programs from the juvenile justice system. This tug-and-war between the two results in practicing both at different times of the prosecution process. Kupchik (2003) calls this compromise: sequential justice model. In Kupchik’s (2003) sample, the beginning of the trial treats the youth offender as non-existent as his or her defense attorney speaks on the offender’s behalf (Kupchik, 2003). The whole trial is performed according to adult court regulations where both attorneys argue on behalf of their clients. After guilt is determined, the criminal proceedings are switched to more lenient, informal means of sentencing (Kuphcik, 2003). The judge assumes the role of allocating the acceptable punishment believed to rehabilitate and transform the offender into a law-abiding citizen (Kupchik, 2003). The punishment can therefore be incarceration and/or probation.
The combination of adult and juvenile justice principles when prosecuting transferred youth offenders is evidence that the public is indecisive about allowing juvenile offenders to receive full prosecution as adults. There are strong arguments for and against transference of youth offenders, which makes it almost impossible to create a general rule of transference. The current system of combining the two principles is the system’s response to transference. Judge Foreman said that transferring should be based at an individual level. Maybe this is the criterion that is needed to better respond to cases that the system believes is too serious for the juvenile justice system but harmful if placed in the adult penitentiary.
Kupchik, A. (2003). Prosecuting adolescents in criminal courts: Criminal or juvenile justice? Social Problems, 50, 439-460.
Kupchik, A. (2007). The correctional experiences of youth in adult and juvenile prisons. Justice Quarterly, 24, 247-270.
Judge John Foreman. Does ‘getting tough’ on crime by increasing adult prosecution of juvenile offenders create criminals and discriminate against minority youth? Lecture Series. October 15, 2008.
This is a matter near and dear to my heart, because I am a huge champion of institutional reform, and the judicial system is at the top of my list of concerns. My disclaimer for all that follows is that I am heavily biased by my own experience working as the liaison between the Juvenile & Domestic Relations District court and a restorative justice initiative in my home town.
When I was working with the courts, a controversy erupted over the case of a 14-year old boy who was being held in the juvenile system for a case involving the death of an infant. Essentially, the boy had tossed a full milk carton out of the window of a school bus traveling down the freeway at 65MPH, wanting to see it “hit something and bust open.” At the speed vehicles were moving, the milk carton he threw ended up shattering the windshield of a car traveling in same direction, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle. An infant was killed in the resulting wreck. This case divided the town into extremes—some were calling for the 12-year-old to be tried in adult court for malicious homicide, others claimed that no one was at fault and accidents, unfortunately, happen. Finally, the family of the child that was killed came forward and asked to speak to the 12-year old boy, and the courts set up a restorative justice conference. I sat in on it. The father of the baby (who had also been the driver whose window was shattered) studied the boy for awhile and then said, “Son, will you ever throw anything out of the window of a moving vehicle again?” the boy, crying, replied, “No sir. Never. I’m so, so sorry for what I did to your family.” No excuses. Simple, gut-wrenching sincerity. And that was it—all the family needed. No formal charges were brought against the boy (although the courts did assign him to both community service and counseling).
Now, contrast this with the case that we studied in class of the fledgling teen gang members who brutally tortured, raped and killed two young girls who were walking home from a party. In many ways, the two cases are not even of the same magnitude—the gang members, were, after all, guilty of intent to commit harm, were tried as adults and some have already been executed after serving time on death row. Does the boy who threw the milk carton to watch it hit something deserve to sit in cell in an adult correctional facility next to the boy who stomped on a teen girl’s neck until she strangled? Absolutely not. And this is my very point: when considering youth criminal justice, it is absolutely essential to avoid making sweeping generalizations about deviance and delinquency, and to evaluate punishment and “corrections” case-by-case.
The articles that we read for this topic explore both juvenile criminal punishment and punishment for youth tried as adults. The line in the sand, again, seems to be both age and magnitude, and this line determines, as Kupchik (2003, 2007) notes, who gets punitive sentencing (those tried as adults) and who gets rehabilitative sentencing (those tried as juveniles). The idea with this is that youth who commit juvenile offenses are not so far “gone” that they can’t one day be productive members of society. Teach them--through counseling, group discussions and other treatments—that society hasn’t given up on them, and they might not give up on society. Educate them in trades or ideas that they may not have had access to before, and they may actually change the world one day. For youth who have committed crimes, their life may just hinge on that line of age and magnitude--both of which run the risk of being arbitrary, in my opinion (☺), when not simultaneously explored in terms of accountability. In this vein, perhaps courts and correctional facilities should base punishment not on the arbitrary possibilities of offense-based rehabilitation, but rather on restorative justice processes that focus on full accountability, and the results thereof.
Consider, again the two cases presented above. In the gang case, one of the convicted gang members still sits on death row, making fervent appeals to the courts, the press and the media, touting how much he has changed and how he should not be punished for the rest of his life for a things that occured in his youth. His appeals are sincere, his desperation obvious. But what is missing from his plea is any admission of regret or sorrow for what he did, only regret for the repercussions. What is missing is any claim of responsibility for his part in the girls’ deaths. His pleas are riddled with concern for his future, but he only acknowledges his past by shifting blame—peer pressure, society, abuse, drugs. He is demonstrating no accountability for what he has done. The boy who threw the milk carton never thought otherwise. They were the same age. They were both linked to the deaths of innocent people.
After reading these articles and experiencing my typical surge of “alternative methods ideology symdrome,” I had to get a sense of the current restorative justice models used in our state, so I checked out the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections website at http://www.azdjc.gov/FAQ.htm. It seems as if the state views “treatment” for juvenile offenders as a “number of programs targeting anger management, impulse control, substance abuse, sexual offenses and mental-health needs.” It is also interesting to note that victim-offender reconciliation, offered through the Victim’s Rights Unit (http://www.azdjc.gov/Offices/Victims/VictimsHome.htm), is a process that victim’s must register for and is primarily framed in terms of restitution (not restoration), in a model called “Clarification Sessions.” Juvenile offenders are not given the option to request a Clarification Session, but they are given the option to participate when one is requested of them. While victim-offender reconciliation is supposed to be victim focused, the process cannot fully be “restorative” if the offender does not also gather meaning from the experience.
Conversely, the Arizona Department of Corrections (www.azcorrections.gov) offers adults and those tried as adult offenders a 10-week Impact of Crime on Victim’s Class, but does not offer opportunities (that I could discern, at least) for any sort of face-to-face reconciliation efforts, instead opting to place inmates into fundraising and community building efforts that directly benefit victims of crime. So it seems that what we have here--at a very rudimentary analysis level, of course—is a juvenile corrections system that teaches youth that restitution is important, but doesn’t teach them why, and an adult system that teaches offenders that restoration is possible, but provides them few opportunities to try it. Hmm.
References:
Kupchik, A. (2003). Prosecuting adolescents in criminal courts: Criminal or juvenile justice? Social Problems, 50, 439-460.
Kupchik, A. (2007). The correctional experiences of youth in adult and juvenile prisons. Justice Quarterly, 24, 247-270.
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