Life sentences for juveniles

The US Supreme Court has just agreed to take up the issue as to whether juveniles can be sentenced to life without parole (LWOP).  The issue relates to a 2004 case, Roper v. Simmons, in which the Court decided to end the use of the death penalty for juveniles.  The victory in Roper was signficant, of course, and there has been a subsequent national movement to address the cruelty of sentencing teenagers to prisons for the rest of their lives.  Those who oppose the use of LWOP for juveniles cite international standards for justice, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in making their arguments against these severe punishments for children.

I do not object to this movement, but as someone who works daily with young people who are in trouble with the law, and encounter sentences as short as probation, but which often end up imprinting them for life, I hope that the national discussion can begin to focus on the onerousness of our criminal sentences in general, for adults and for juveniles.  Not only are the sentences for murder in this country particularly harsh–and Professor Jonathan Simon of Berkeley has been doing work recently to point this out–including those for young people who aren’t necessarily serving life without parole, but who in New York, where I work, have indefinite sentences ending in life.  What I’m discovered now is that the sentences for even the most minor crimes–punching someone in the nose, for example–can enmesh a young person in the juvenile justice system for years.  They emerge from childhood having experienced the harshest of our state institutions–psychiatric hospitals, group homes, foster homes, residential treatment centers, prisons–with few resources and little human capital to survive in the world on their own.

Isolation in Confinement

The New Yorker recently published an article by Atul Gawande, the surgeon and writer, about the phenomenon of solitary confinement in US prisons.  Gawande describes the extraordinarily negative psychological and physical symptoms that occur in individuals who have experienced solitary confinement, and the widespread use in prisons in the United States.  It is a compelling and devastating article.

What Gawande doesn’t talk about is the extent to which the process of solitary confinement, usually called ‘room confinement,’ is used in juvenile detention and residential facilities across the United States.  In the New York City jails, young people are locked up as much as 23 hours a day in ‘room confinement’ or in the ‘bing,’ which is the Rikers Island facility where youth who have commited an infraction are sent.  Though they are supposed to receive their school work in these facilities (which they don’t consistently receive), they have few other rights or opportunities afforded to them.  In these places where boredom already hampers their agency and impacts on their well-being, this experience of confinement — which could last for the entire time they are incarcerated — is soul destroying.

In a recent report released by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, researchers found that 62% of juveniles who committed suicide in confinement had experienced room confinement, and half of those who committed suicides had been on room confinement at the time of their death.

It may be important to begin to document some of the uses and experiences of solitary confinement amongst young people, and whether the deleterious effects documented by Gawande may manifest themselves differently amongst young people, and may have longer-lasting consequences.

Kids jailed for Cash on 20/20

20/20 aired a special on Friday night about the Judges who jailed young people in exchange for money from a private detention facility.  The show can be viewed here.  This show, and an article that appeared in the New York Times this week, highlight young people’s voices and experiences about this controversy.  They offer a starkly different perspective than we are used to in the public forum about young people charged with crimes, one which suggests that there should limits set on the way that we punish young people who violate norms.

Take Action in New York State

The Governor of New York is currently considering his budget, and there is an opportunity to re-direct funds from youth prisons into community-based programs.  The Citizens Committee for Children has created a site where you can contact key lawmakers in New York to ask for these changes.  That site can be found here.

Resource

The Campaign for Youth Justice, an advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, has published an excellent report called ‘The Consequences Aren’t Minor: The Impact of Trying Youth as Adults and Strategies for Reform,” which includes an excellent analysis of the harms caused to young people tried in the adult court system, as well as some in-depth profiles of particular state laws.

See the report here.

Malign neglect on Rikers Island

A small story was published in the New York Daily News last week which I’m sure went unnoticed by many.  It reads:

Teen found dead in Rikers cell

By Simone Weichselbaum and Alison Gendar
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, October 20th 2008, 1:25 AM

The NYPD is investigating the murder of an 18-year-old inmate found dead in his Rikers Island jail cell, officials said Sunday. Christopher Robinson was discovered faceup in his cell Saturday morning, his body covered by welts and bruises, police sources said.

City Correction Department officials worked to revive him, but he was declared dead at 11:58 a.m., sources said.

Detectives were poring over Rikers’ security tapes for hints at what might have happened, a police source said.

“He was given a beatdown, a fatal one,” another police source said.

The city medical examiner will determine a cause of death, but detectives from the 41st Precinct in the Bronx are investigating Robinson’s death as a homicide, police sources said.

I had actually heard word about this story through someone at my old office, who represented a young man who was in the same facility where this teenager died.  According to the young man, Christopher Robinson was first badly beaten, then left by himself in a cell by staff.  Whatever the facts are, what seems clear to me is that this is a case of neglect, and one which sadly happens every day at Riker’s Island.  The city can easily blame the ‘gang culture’ at the youth facility, the dangerousness of other young men, their inherent violence, or any other cause, but the simple fact is that when a young person enters that facility, it should be the responsibility of the staff at that facility to keep him–and all of the other young men held there–safe.

According to the Daily News, an internal investigation is taking place, and two officers have been placed on modified duty as a result of the incident.  Additionally, three teenagers are being sought in the young men’s murder.  However, I wish that there could be a more systematic challenge made to the system’s perspective on care in general.  It is outrageous–and criminal–that such a heinous act takes place behind the prison doors in this city, and in particular with the consequences focused almost entirely on the boys who participated in the beating, rather than the system more broadly.

UN report on violence against children in institutions

The UN has produced an excellent report on violence against children in institutions (both punitive and ‘care’ institutions).  It is a wide-ranging assessment of the issues involved in institutionalizing children globally, and provides some cogent and important recommendations.

Palestinian children in detention

From B’Tselem:

7 Sept. 2008: 13 minors, two of them girls, being held in administrative detention

According to B’Tselem’s figures, on 31 August 2008, Israel was holding 13 Palestinian minors, two of them girls, in prolonged administrative detention in Israel, in breach of law. At the end of June 2008, 730 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention in Israel.

The two girls, Salwa Salah and Sarra Sirwah, both 17 years old, were detained on 5 June 2008 in the middle of the night and are being held in Damon Prison together with adult female prisoners. The detention orders against them were issued for four months, but can be extended an indefinite number of times for up to six months each time.

Administrative detention is carried out solely on the basis of an administrative order, without a judicial determination, without an indictment being filed, and without a trial. Given that administrative detention infringes the right to freedom and due process, and in light of the clear danger of abuse, international law imposes rigid limitations in its use.

Over the years, Israel has detained Palestinians for long periods of time without bringing them to court or even telling them of the suspicions against them. When detainees appeal their detention, neither they nor their attorneys are allowed to see the allegedly incriminating evidence. By acting in this way, Israel shows utter disregard for defenses available to suspects in Israeli and international law, which are intended to ensure the right to liberty and due process, the right of persons to state their case, and the presumption of innocence.
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in administrative detention of minors in Israel, an especially grave phenomenon. The International Convention on the Rights of the Child states, in article 37, states that, “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

The government of Israel must release all administrative detainees and cease using this unlawful, sweeping practice. If there is sufficient evident to prosecute a person being held in administrative detention, then an indictment should be filed and a trial held.

Number of Palestinian minors Israel has held in administrative detention

Resource

The Justice Policy Institute has issued an excellent report about the conditions of confinement in juvenile detention.  This report draws from social science research that addresses some of the harms of confinement for young people.  The report is well-researched, thorough and concise.

The report can be seen here: Dangers of Detention

Juvenile Justice in Africa

I’ve recently been interested in exploring the tensions between the enactment in 1989 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and the decline in the conditions of children worldwide that have occurred as a result of the structural adjustment policies that began with neoliberal economic policies in the 1980s.  I was perplexed by the fact that though all but two nations ratified the Convention (Somalia and the United States were the exceptions), and many states proclaimed interest in protecting the rights of the child, few states in practice actual follow the terms of the Convention, particularly with respect to children’s rights in legal procedures.

While researching the Convention, I learned that government officials in Mozambique adopted the terms of the Convention fully into their national laws, recognizing that the stated claims of the Convention could be used to eradicate child poverty.  The rights of children could be interpreted as the rights to live happy and healthy lives, free of poverty.

Assuming that Mozambique’s unique interpretation of the Convention might result in unique juvenile justice practices, I began to look for information about their juvenile justice system.  Sadly, the results of my search were depressing.  I found this article from The New York Times which looked at the conditions of young offenders in a number of African nations, and found that despite the fact that many of these nations had ostensibly strict allegiance to the tenets of the Convention, young offenders suffer terribly in these nations.

Though I am reluctant to generalize about African nations, I write about this issue more broadly to try to suggest that the disjuncture between several of these nations’ stated desires to eradicate child poverty and their inability–as a result of structural dependence on global bodies like the World Bank–to resolve the problems of poverty.  The negative side-effects of structural adjustment policies, which withdraw money from public institutions and focus on private investment, among other things, is to pull money away from institutions that serve women and children in particular, like schools, hospitals, and, as we see, prisons.  Though I don’t want to suggest that prisons should benefit from public spending entirely–in fact, I believe that public investment in resolving social inequality may have a kind of ‘trickle-down’ impact on crime–I do think that global economic policies propagated by developed nations prevent countries like Mozambique from acting autonomously to develop policies consonant with their goals.

To read more about child justice in Africa, see here.