· In 2008, 7,703 children under age 18 were held in American adult local jails.
· 3,650 children under the age 18 were held in American adult state prisons.
· 22 states allow children as young as 7 to be tried as adults.
· Every year, nearly 80 children age 13 and younger are judicially transferred to adult court.
These are absolutely shocking statistics. The book, "From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System," tells of how the nation treats pre-adolescent children (age 12 and under) who commit serious crimes.
This report recommends a few things to keep children out of the harsh conditions in prisons. The first is that we should work to keep our children in the juvenile justice system. The second is that parole opportunities should be given to young children regardless of the length of the sentence. The article says that in Florida and Pennsylvania, children as young as 7 can serve life in prison without parole.
The final recommendation is that children in the adult system should not be housed with adult criminals, but instead in a juvenile facility. This I would absolutely agree with. Most seven year olds are raised by their parents in a cozy and safe environment. I can only imagine the psychological impact that growing up in a prison amongst adult criminals would have on a seven year old.
Here is a news article about a 12 year old boy being charged as an adult for the murder of his father's pregnant girlfriend:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/21/jordan-brown-killed-fathe_n_168862.html
My view on this is that I think our system takes it too far when trying children as adults. I understand that they do some very adult things, but I can't help but feel that we aren't realizing they are children. If we simply look at how they are developed emotionally we can see that they by no means act in adult ways. It scares me to think of my little brothers, who are around the age of 12, going to prison. Not only that, but spending their life there around the other people in prison. I believe our law system needs to get a better grip on children and charging them as adults. Any one of us can think back to the stupid things we used to do when we were kids. I even read old diaries and think, "Wow, that isn't even like me! I was so stupid!" Children at age 12 are still being molded, and I think by placing them into a prison, with adult criminals, is going to mold them in a very negative way.
This is a very interesting topic! The cover of the book grabbed my attention right away and got me thinking about child statistics in the criminal justice system. I would definitely like to read this book someday, as my focus for future education is working with juveniles or children in the criminal justice system.
I like how the title of the book relates time out and hard time. In my juvenile delinquency course, we learn how the family environment plays a large part in shaping children and adolescents into potential criminals. A lot of criminals have a background of growing up in a dysfunctional family characterized by either abuse or poor parenting.
Along with this similar theme....In the book I am reading for this course, "Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit," John Douglas gives his real life accounts of interviewing convicted criminals in state prisons and penitenitiaries. A common theme among the criminals he interviews is having a dysfunctional childhood often as a result of poor parenting, including neglect, abuse (sexually, physically, and/or mentally), too much or too little demands, etc.
This post also reminded me of Baumrind's parenting styles and how they influence involvement in delinquency and antisocial behavior. Baumrind suggests a balance of demandingness (extent to which parents demand age-appropriate behavior from the child) and responsiveness (degree to which parents are supportive of needs of child) as an effective parenting style. Baumrind also identifies four parenting styles based on parental demands and parental support: (1) authoritative (high demands, high support); (2) indulgent/permissive (low demands, high support); (3) authoritarian (high demands, low support; and (4) indifferent/neglecting (low demands, low support). The best parenting style, according to Baumrind, is authoritative, because it is characterized as warm, but firm and it explains rules to children with realistic standards.
Wow. This is incredible and horrible. I cannot even begin to fathom how horrible this is. But, at the same time, I feel conflicted. I always thought older teens, like 16 or 17, were the only ones charged in adult trials. And often times, I thought that it was fair. Many/most children, by that age, have a grasp on basic concepts of right and wrong. And one of those basic concepts is murdering people is probably wrong. But when you get down to kids who are only 12 or 13, and as young as 7, I have a hard time believing they truly grasp a situation this serious. Even though there are only a few years difference between 12, 13 and 16, 17, that is a big time for development in teenagers. Another thing that strikes me, is how a young kid could ever even do something that horrible. Sure, we should not sentence 7 year olds to prison, but we should probably look further into this problem. I have a difficult time imagining the child’s environment is very stable if they are committing murder at this young of an age. In the Huffington Post article, this kid (if he did commit the murder, they had not had the trial yet) seems to have, at the very best, very little of a motive. This is one of the scariest things I have ever read. So I decided to do some more research, and found this website for an organization that tries to argue in defense of these young children. The link below is for a trial that happened here, in Iowa.
http://www.eji.org/eji/node/371
THis is a topic that grabs my attention becasue i think its an interesting debate on whether kids under the age of 18 should be held criminally responsible for their actions and be treated like adults. In one aspect of kids under 18 don't have the same rights as adults such as voting then how can you treat them like an adult in other aspects. I can see how a child say 16 and older could be triad as an adult for serious crimes and in some ways it makes sense to me. At the age of 16 a child should know the difference between right and wrong and they should be held accountable for their actions however i don't know how i feel about sentencing them to life in prison at the age of 16. I see absolutely no reason to try a child as young as seven as an adult, they may somewhat know what is right and wrong but at their age they don't see the whole picture of the consequences of their actions, i think in these cases the parents should investigated to find out why their child would commit such a crime. In any way weather children are tried as adults or children i feel there should be more focus on rehabilitation than simply putting them in a cell and giving up on them. They should be given a chance to change their life around becasue they could have so much more ahead of them if they were re directed.