"Children as Criminals"
The Unitarian
Universalist Church
My friends Paul and Leah Goddard bid
at last year's auction for the opportunity to choose a subject for a sermon
I would prepare and deliver. The subject they chose was "Juvenile Justice,"
the area of the justice system in which Paul was, until last month, working.
With friends like Paul and Leah, who needs enemies. Given that there is a
portion of our congregation that wants sermons that are more upbeat and
optimistic and hopeful than those I commonly deliver are perceived by them
to be, this assignment was hardly a favor. It is hardly irrelevant that Paul
has taken the opportunity to work with felons rather than juveniles. This
is not an area of concern to which any other than a Polyanna could bring
a large measure of hope. It is said that the definition of neurotic is doing
the same thing over and over and hoping that the outcome will be different.
When it comes to Juvenile Justice, there is clear evidence that what we have
been doing has not worked, and we keep on doing it, expecting the outcome
to change.
The first thing I thought of when Paul gave me the assignment
was the Stanley Kubrick movie of Anthony Burgess' novel,"A Clockwork Orange."
That was one of the most violent and depressing movies I have ever seen,
and memories of it still haunt me.
The movie was about a quartet of youth, a little into the
future, which demonstrates the behavior we have come to know as super-predatory.
These four guys go out to hurt people because they like hurting people -
it gives them a thrill. They make some money in the process, but the money
is not important, it is the power they feel, the ecstasy of inflicting pain
and fear. They rape and pillage for the delight of it. They are utterly without
conscience - or almost. Actually, there is some conscience present in three
of them because they resent it when their leader, Alex, the narrator, abuses
the most dimwitted of the four. There are, for them, some limits.
The other three boys end up turning on Alex and he gets
arrested and sent off to reform school. He hears rumors of a special experimental
treatment that is being prepared and he signs up for it with the understanding
that he will be almost immediately released if he takes it.
The treatment is what we call "aversion therapy." Each day
Alex is exposed to films of violence which he is forced to see - his head
is fixed on the screen and his eyelids are fastened open - he cannot look
away. He begins to identify with the victims and their pain. He is brainwashed
to the extent that even thoughts of violence cause him pain. And Alex is
turned loose.
When he returns to his former haunts, Alex finds that things
have changed. He, in fact, becomes a victim - he is beaten by the police
(including one of his former buddies), he is exploited by politicians who
want to get at the government which has treated him so badly, and he is driven
to attempt suicide so he can be used as a martyr. He however survives the
suicide attempt and pretty much returns to his old brutal self. End of movie.
The viewer is left with the sense that there is, in fact,
little or no hope. While there are things that might be done to address the
violence of the young, the treatment is in effect as violent as the behavior
it addresses. It cures the perpetrator only by depriving him of his humanity
- a high cost indeed. To what can we look forward? A society in which the
innocent are always potential victims of the depraved?
Some of the reading I did for this sermon is hard to
differentiate from Burgess' novel. Edward Humes' "No Matter How Loud
I Shout," subtitled "A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court," which
was published last year; and the even newer "A kind and just
parent" subtitled "The Children of Juvenile Court" by William Ayers,
which was published this year by our association's Beacon Press, both tell
some stories not unlike the story of Alex. Both authors spent a year in Juvenile
detention courts and detention centers, getting to know some of the youth
who pass through. While the authors writing styles differ, the books are
quite similar in what they reveal. Humes in California and Ayers in Chicago,
find some young people in the system who are very like Alex. They tell us
a little more about the context which contributed to the brutal behavior,
but they never explain it away. Both focus attention on the diversity of
the young people who enter the system and the irrationality of the ways in
which they are treated - - those who have demonstrated the least promise,
the greatest disregard for other people and the least remorse, are sometimes
given the lightest sentences while those for whom the authors saw the greatest
hope are dealt with the most harshly by the courts. Not surprisingly,
socio-economic status has a whole lot to do with how young offenders are
treated.
Let's step backward for a moment. How did this all come
into being? We have not always had juvenile courts. Historically, young criminals
were dealt with right alongside adult criminals - the focus was on the crime,
not on the particular characteristics of the criminal.
Jane Addams (about whom there is reportedly no evidence
of Unitarian affiliation, although we often claim her - she must have been
a Unitarian "without knowing it") was instrumental in the creation of the
first juvenile court system in the nation, in Cook County in 1899. Addams
and her colleagues at Hull House were conscious of youthful crime as a response
to poverty. They worked to create public playgrounds and public kindergartens
and to prohibit exploitation of children in sweat shops, and they insisted
that children should not be treated as hardened criminals. They wanted a
court which would focus on the needs of the child and focus on rehabilitating
rather than punishing the child. Ayres title, "A Kind and Just Parent" describes
just what the court was supposed to be. There were to be no lawyers wrangling
- no finding of guilt and innocence. When a child behaved inappropriately,
there was to be a private and confidential and informal hearing which would
focus not on the infraction but on the best interests of the child and how
he (generally it was he) could be transformed into a productive citizen.
The definitions were enlarged to include "poredelinquent or unsocialized
behavior" during the early years so the court would be in a position to intervene
before the behavior became a major problem. It included those whom parents
found incontrollable and those who were deemed "in danger" of becoming problems.
The idea of special juvenile courts spreaacross the
country.
While most states left the definition of exacvtly what behaviors
would qualify children for court attention, Falcon Baker cites the Arkansas
statute which was more specific:
It was all an informal process so there were no findings
of guilt, and no fixed sentences since there was no "punishment." Being sent
to a training school was not a punishment, it was an opportunity to be improved.
Because juvenile court proceedings were private, it was,
for a long time, virtually impossible to evaluate their success. The records
were sealed so who knew if they were helping or hurting?
It was a great and inspiring concept, but the implementation
was something very different. When government finally got around to trying
to evaluate the system, it was found to be capricious and unjust and often
brutal. The rights of children were violated in ways that no adult offender
could be treated, and the punishments were often far more cruel. There were
always people in the system who believed in it and brought compassion and
a sense of justice, but it was disastrously flawed. Kids who were truants
or rebellious often were thrown in with those who were violent criminals
and were taught by the pros. On the other hand, it was just as likely that
a youthful serious offender would have his hand slapped and would be returned
to the streets to try harder.
The system was shaken up a bit in 1967 by the case of Gerald
Frances Gault. Gerald, who was fifteen, had been questioned by the police
when he was 13 about the theft of a friend's baseball glove, but it was found
there was no foundation for the charge, and then a year and a half later
he was with a friend who stole a wallet from a woman's purse. What got him
in trouble was the complaint of a neighbor that he made a lewd telephone
call to her. His parents came home from work and they couldn't find him.
Finally they discovered that he had been carted off by the police. Since
his juvenile court hearing was informal, his parents were unable to get the
woman who made the complaint to come to have her complaint challenged, the
previous encounters with the police were deemed by the judge to be sufficient
evidence of being "habitually involved in immoral matters" and he was sentenced
to the state industrial school until he was 21. Had he been an adult, he
would have been entitled to a lawyer, an opportunity to bring witnesses and
to challenge the state's case, the penalty would have been a small fine and
a maximum of two months in jail. Because he was a kid, Gerald received none
of the protections and an outrageous sentence in the context of the charge.
The US Supreme Court decided in 1967 In RE Gault that it was unconstitutional
to deprive juveniles of due process - that they had the right to legal
representation, to be notified of charges, and to confront and cross examine
witnesses.
It would seem as if this was a giant step forward, but it
was one of those very mixed situations. The result was more formality and
some protections, but the focus was taken off the child and returned to the
crime itself. What has happened, in fact, has been the shifting of many juvenile
crimes back to the adult courts. In 1980, every state dealt with all young
criminals in juvenile courts. Today, only Hawaii still tries all those under
16 as juveniles - states have defined more and more crimes as adult crimes
regardless of the age of the perpetrator.
What has, in fact happened, is that less and less attention
is paid to minor crimes done by young children at a point at which intervention
might, in fact, be helpful because the focus is on those who have an established
pattern of criminal behavior.
There is today what experts refer to as a funnel effect.
It is estimated that some 2.3 million kids have an encounter with the police
each year. Almost half of them never make the records at all, and half of
those who do are not formally charged. 1/100 gets channeled to adult court,
4/10 get immediate probation. It is estimated that 22% face any meaningful
consequences for their behavior.
The statistics about the problem today are confusing. There
are those who insist that there is an epidemic of youth crime and paint a
picture that is much like the one depicted in Clockwork Orange. All of the
talk about super- predators scares a lot of people. There are those who suggest
otherwise. Ayers reports a Gallop Poll from 1994 that showed that the average
American adult believed that teenagers under 18 committed 43% of violent
crime. The true figure, he says, is 13%. He quotes Mike Males of the University
of California, who found that adjusted for poverty, 13-19 year olds have
almost the same crime rate as people in their 40's and one that is well below
those in their 20's and 30's. Parents are six times more likely to kill their
kids than the other way around." In 1993, when "350,000 juveniles were arrested
for violent felonies and misdemeanors in the United States, "370,000 children
and youth were confirmed victims of violent and sexual offenses perpetrated
by their parents or caretakers." He says, "the link is obvious: violence
against children generates violent children; child abuse 'increases the number
of violent criminals by 38%, and raises the national crime volume by over
60%.'"
The media have made a lot of adults very nervous about young
people - seemingly well beyond the actual threat. The result has been enthusiasm
for more punative responses. "Lock them up!" "Get them out of the way!" Often,
of course, disproportionately, the "them" are young people of color.
We, of course, go through fads in treatment. The big one
these days is "boot camp" for kids, although studies have already established
that they often brutalize kids and produce high recidivism rates (70% in
two camps in Florida and Ohio that were studied). Margaret Beyer in an article
for the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section, points out
that:
Given their reaction against unfairness, imposed structure,
and punishment, it is not surprising that young people reject what might
be offered as assistance when they mistrust the adults in charge as unfair,
controlling, and punitive [common for adults running such operations.] This
rejection of help is a strength - it is the way that young people have survived
the adversity of poverty an racism. If this mistrust of unfair, controlling,
and punitive adults is subdued, it undermines the very survival technique
that has allowed these youths to make it as far as they have.
Dr. Beyer suggests we do know what works - programs
that:
There is an almost uncanny similarity about the books addressing
the issues of juvenile justice. They find few demons inside the juvenile
justice system. What they report, time and again, are people who care and
who are burned out by outrageous caseloads and whose opportunities to address
the issues they see are hampered by budget constraints. We want the problem
solved, but we want it done without the expenditure of money. While there
are incompetents in every field, there are prosecutors, defense attorneys,
judges, probation officers, teachers and counselors in the American juvenile
justice system who are motivated by their belief that they can make a difference
in the lives of young people, and sometimes they do. Often they are frustrated
by the lack of time and of funding. The problem is not unsolvable. The question
is really whether we have the will to invest the resources to make it
so.
I made a discovery this week. I couldn't find my own copy
of a Clockwork Orange, so I went to the library and borrowed one. It had
a preface from Anthony Burgess who complained that the original American
edition, and Kubrick's film which was based on it, had been altered over
his objection. The final chapter was omitted because the American publisher
insisted that American readers wouldn't buy it. In the original, Alex, who
is 15 at the start of the story, gets to be 18 by the end, and in the last
chapter he faces the reality that the time has come for him to grow up and
begin to take on the responsibilities of life. The ending with despair was
not the way the author envisioned the story.
In fact, many of those who encounter the juvenile justice
system do, in fact, grow up and grow out of the behavior which brought them
to its attention. It would be appropriate for us at least do as little harm
as possible to them in the process - it would wonderful if we would make
the commitment of the needed resources to do everything in our power to help
them along the way.
. . . visiting a public pool room or policy shop or place
where any gaming device is operated; wandering about the street at night;
attempting to jump on a moving train; writing or using any vile, vulgar,
profane or indecent language, smoking cigarettes about any public place;
and being guilty of any indecent, immoral or lascivious conduct.