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TechnoratiTo many in the United States, the country of Somalia conjures up images of a primitive Third World country. So it may come as a surprise to learn that Somalia and the United States share an unfortunate commonality - they are the only countries in the world that refuse to sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child because of its ban on sentencing children to die in prison.
Under the U.N. covenant, sentencing children, even those who commit serious crimes, to permanent imprisonment is considered inhumane and inconsistent with civilized society and thus rejected by the rest of the world.
According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there are now about a dozen people outside the United States and Somalia who were sentenced to permanent imprisonment as children: South Africa has four, Tanzania has one, and Israel has seven. In contrast, the United States has 2,270 children serving such a sentence, including 227 in California.
The United States is out of step with the rest of the world in the treatment of children because of recent changes in American political and legal culture. Although the legal capacity to sentence children to permanent imprisonment existed before 1980, it was rarely invoked. This changed with the rise of the conservative movement in American politics and its adherents' strident belief in the deterrent effect of harsh sentencing policies. The rhetorical emphasis of conservative philosophy on punishment and vengeance has created a political culture where politicians compete over who is more ruthless in sentencing offenders. The public policies resulting from this new political culture have led to the harshest sentencing practices in U.S. history.
Nowhere are these harsh policies more evident than in the treatment of children. Before 1990, few children were sentenced to die in prison. When recently asked to explain the United States' noncompliance with international law on the sentencing of children to permanent imprisonment, the Bush administration claimed that the sentences were reserved for only the most hardened young offenders who "had committed gravely serious crimes." Despite the Bush administration's claims, the evidence suggests otherwise.
According to the Human Rights Watch study, 26 percent of the children in the United States condemned to permanent imprisonment were sentenced under the felony murder law. The felony murder law mandates that even when someone is only marginally involved in a homicide, they are held to the same level of responsibility as the primary perpetrator, even if they had no intention to harm anyone and possessed no weapon.
European countries and many states have abandoned the felony murder law as unjust, but it continues to be practiced in California.
Justice in the United States is a function of individual state laws and discretionary charging practices by prosecutors. As it is now, 42 states allow children to be sentenced to prison without the possibility of ever being released. Of these 42 states, six - California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri - account for more than 1,500 of the 2,270 total. Many of these children committed their crimes when they were 14 or younger, but the laws make no exception and show no mercy. Judges have no discretion, and they must impose the mandatory sentence of life in prison without hope of release.
In California, the decision to sentence children to die in prison is often a function of the political culture of the county in which the crime is prosecuted. Consider the case of Sara Kruzan. Sara was born in Riverside County, where she was raised by an abusive, drug-addicted mother. At the age of 11, Sara was befriended by a 33-year-old man who promised to take care of her. After winning her trust, he proceeded to molest her and coax her into prostitution. When she was 16, she killed him. After she was arrested, the district attorney in Riverside County opted to ignore the extenuating circumstances and sought to have her tried in adult court for first-degree murder. An evaluation by the California Youth Authority concluded she was amenable to treatment in the juvenile justice system, but a local judge - at the urging of the prosecutor - transferred her to adult court, where she was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder. Kruzan is now 28 and a model inmate, but she will spend the rest of her life in prison for the crime she committed at age 16.
Like Kruzan, the children who commit serious crimes at a young age are often the broken and battered survivors of horrendous childhoods, who, if not for their crimes, would elicit pity and compassion. Had Kruzan's case occurred in another county, the legal outcome may have been much different. Because Riverside County takes a more rigid and unsympathetic approach to sentencing than most other California counties, her sentence was harsher than it may have been in another jurisdiction.
State Democratic Sens. Leland Yee of San Francisco and Gloria Romero of Los Angeles have offered a bill abolishing the practice of mandatory lifetime sentencing for children. The bill amends current law to allow consideration for release after the child serves a minimum of 25 years. Although the bill is a reasonable reform that has been adopted in other states, it faces a difficult hurdle as the usual array of conservative interest groups have lined up against it.
In considering this very modest and reasonable reform, the governor and the Legislature should consider the words of Cesare Beccaria, 18th century Italian philosopher and author of the treatise "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764), who wrote that "laws seeking to regulate human actions should not embrace savage measures."
Daniel Macallair is the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and teaches in the department of criminal justice studies at San Francisco State University.
© 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.
15 Comments so far
Show AllWho'd blame these imprisoned young people for rioting, a la Attica? It's just as Karl Marx said, you get revolts, big time, when too many people have cracked it that they've nothing to lose but their chains.
Domestic abuse is epidemic in the US - and usually the victims are the ones who pay the highest price for their unfortunate circumstances. Women and children who kill their abusers do so because there is no other alternative - to pretend otherwise is a lie. They are brainwashed by their abusers, and disowned by society - there is no place for them to go. Children born into such heinous situations have no way out - and even if they survive and don't kill their abusers, they often end up marrying into the same cesspool that produced them - and go on to raise more abused children.
Let's not forget that conservative extremists are known for being especially abusive towards women and children - that's why women and children were often the target of religious prosecution - burning witches, for example (many were children). Such extremists blame the victim because they are unwilling to take responsibility for their own sick behavior - they identify with the abuser, so are in denial.
Women and children are 'property' to them - whether it's in the US, Saudi Arabia, or any other misogynistic culture. And they use their warped version of mainstream 'religion' to justify their obscenities, even though 'Jesus' made clear that mistreating women and children was wrong, going out of his way to do so (he never mentioned homosexuals, mind you). So much for 'Christians' - they pick and choose which rules to obey and which ones to ignore.
Refusing to forgive others - especially those driven to extreme limits - condemns them by the rules of their own religion. Wouldn't it be nice if they would all rot in hell? Instead they make a hell of life on earth - and it's only getting worse. We are returning to savagery and barbarism - and it's not as if the US ever fully rose above it. So much for the 'moral high ground' - this is a very sick society indeed.
Preying on the most vulnerable is despicable - but that is predatory capitalism for you. The prison industrial complex in the US is an obscene disgrace, but one of the only growing 'industries' besides the MIC. It's all about money and profits - more prisoners are needed, just as more war is needed to prop up the only 'growth industries' - and the most vulnerable are always the easiest targets.
The US has become the model of those countries it once held in contempt - the Theory of the Grotesque writ large. We have become our own worst enemy - and as the economy tanks, things can only get worse.
I look forward to the demise of all the rot that Amerika has become. May it wallow in death and destruction. America and all it stands for sucks.
Quote: "State Democratic Sens. Leland Yee of San Francisco and Gloria Romero of Los Angeles have offered a bill abolishing the practice of mandatory lifetime sentencing for children. The bill amends current law to allow consideration for release after the child serves a minimum of 25 years".
THAT IS TOO LONG. There's no reason to say a person is releasable after 25 years of good conduct when 20 years, 15 years, even five consecutive years of only good conduct suffices. 25 years instead of fully permanent isn't going to do much good for people like Kruzan; it'll do some good [after] 25 ... YEARS, but we also need to be rid of all unjust and otherwise excessive laws and law enforcement.
Kruzan should've never been convicted, and this surely applies to many enough other people who were convicted based on acts committed during childhood and young adolescence.
And I know first-hand that the article is right in saying that a lot of violent young offenders become this way due to an unhealthy family environment at home. I can empathise with Kruzan's story; except I didn't kill anyone, for I committed no crime, and therefore didn't do prison time. That part of her story is one I don't have the needed experience to relate to, but I can understand the anger the adopter or "guardian" "adult" caused.
She's totally innocent. Her reaction is understandable and one we don't need to judge harshly on or about.
25 YEARS is too long for the [minimum].
I am reading Molly Ivins' new book "The Bill of Wrongs" which in painstaking detail validates the current administrations violations of the Bill of Rights. Get it at your local library. It's a short but stout read and makes it's points with details that are bound to surprise. Highly recommend.
Well...what do you do? That's what having a "culture of life" president does for you...
Hellodarling: You are correct. They are viewed as 'pre-consumers' and 'an emerging consumer demographic' by the corporate oligarchy.
The vast majority of the North American and UK population are no longer referred to as citizens, but rather as 'consumers'. We have been arbitraraly stripped of our humanity, and been reduced to mere economic place holders. We truly deserve the derisive label 'sheeple'. We are nothing more than an exploitable commodity to the corporations.
Is this what Bush meant by 'No Child Left Behind'? Or was he refering to his interpretation of the Xtian 'Rapture'?
America seems to have forgotten what it takes to be human. How can we ever teach our children?
In the US, children worldwide are assumed to have the right to die under any number of circumstances: by clusterbomb, by landmine, by gunfire or in prison. Who says we don't support the rights of children?
We're getting closer all the time to the barbaric practices of olde England. For some reason, the idiots in charge have the mind set that childen or women who kill are the worst kind of beast, while men who kill are just being men.
I remember a case in CA years ago where a guy killed his wife, her parents and sister, then took his three young daughters out somewhere and slit their throats. One of them lived. Don't know what happened to the guy, but last I'd heard, he was trying to get custody of his surviving daughter. But Susan Smith is still rotting in jail, I'm sure.
If it would help world peace, you can be sure the US won't support it. They have a long history of being in the minority of one or two or maybe three countries against the rest of the world.
...and Sara Kruzan will never get the opportunity to vote for anyone who speaks out against these savage abuses against American children.
Imagine my (total lack of) surprise...
children aren't "children" any more than democracy in america is "democracy".