SUNS 4327 Thursday 19 November 1998
UNITED STATES: CHILDREN SUFFERING IN US JUSTICE SYSTEM
Washington, Nov 18 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- More than 100,000 U.S. children are sent to correctional facilities each year, often without access to adequate mental health or educational services,
according to a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International (AI).
While in the "juvenile-justice system," many are subjected to brutal physical force, cruelty, and extreme overcrowding, according to the report, which is part of an unprecedented, year-long
campaign to focus international attention on the human rights situation in the United States.
"Such treatment of juveniles is tantamount to throwing away the key to the future of tens of thousands of youth," according to AI which based the study in part on a two-week trip by its researchers to correctional facilities in Maine, Michigan, Illinois, and California.
"The message we heard over and over again was that if they (the inmates) complain, they suffer for it," said researcher Jo Szwarc.
The 24-page report, 'Betraying the Young,' found that the rights and protection of juveniles in the United States were steadily being eroded. Instead of rehabilitation and alternative services, an increasing number of children were subject to physical abuse, excessive imprisonment, and detention with adults.
In addition, AI found wide disparities in the prosecution and sentencing of children based on their racial and class background. While African-American youths constitute only 15% of the population
between the ages of 10 and 17, 30% of the youths arrested, 40% of those held in custody, and 50% of those who are transferred to stand trial as adults in criminal court are African-American.
The report was released in advance of the centennial next year of the U.S. juvenile-justice system which was conceived precisely as a way to treat children, accused of criminal acts, differently than
adult suspects in order to maximise their chances of successful rehabilitation and re-integration into society.
That fundamental principle has been badly eroded in recent years, however, as youths increasingly have been treated like adults - from the time they are first detained through sentencing and
punishment, according to the Amnesty report.
The most notorious example is the sentencing to death of individuals who were less than 18 at the time the crime was committed. Such executions are banned under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights which the United States ratified in 1992, and by the Convention on the Rights of the Child which the United States and Somalia still must ratify.
Since 1992, however, U.S. state authorities executed six prisoners for crimes committed when they were under 18, and sentenced to death more than 70 others.
"In contrast to the international consensus," the report says, "some U.S. politicians are calling for children as young as 11 to be made eligible for the death penalty" while the Supreme Court, "has determined that 16 should be the minimum age, not 18."
Some 200,000 children a year are prosecuted in general criminal courts; an estimated 7,000 children are held in jails before trial; and more than 11,000 are in prisons or other adult facilities where they are often a target of sexual or physical assault by adult inmates.
Many of those who are prosecuted in adult courts did not even commit violent crimes. In 1995, for example, less than half the cases transferred from juvenile to adult criminal court were charged with violent crimes.
The consequences of being imprisoned with adults are serious. According to the report, children held with adults are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten
by staff, and eight times more likely to commit suicide than children held in juvenile facilities.
In addition, they often were denied access to education. Some 38 of the 50 U.S. states house juveniles in adult prisons with no special programmes or educational services for young inmates.
There also has been a steady rise in the number of children held in juvenile facilities before their cases are heard or after conviction in the last decade. That increase has contributed to a serious overcrowding crisis in many juvenile facilities throughout the country, according to Amnesty.
AI found many cases of what it called "excessive use of incarceration." In Georgia, it found an 11-year-old boy who was detained for threatening his teacher; a 12-year-old boy detained for making a harassing telephone call; and a 12-year-old girl for painting graffiti on a wall.
Often children who simply ran away from home were incarcerated.
"This punitive attitude towards children has been fuelled by growing community fears about the extent and nature of youth crime in the United States, and media reports of 'super predators
flooding the nation's streets,' and 'teenage time-bombs'," the report said.
Once held, children were frequently subjected to abusive treatment and cruelty by prison staff, according to the report. In South Carolina earlier this year, residents of a juvenile facility sued
its private owners alleging that staff had punched, choked, kicked and sprayed them with chemicals to enforce discipline. The U.S. Justice Department initiated an investigation into a similar case
in Kentucky at the same time.
Despite its prohibition by international standards, solitary confinement is also used against children as a common punishment. In one case in Arizona, a 16-year-old boy was placed in solitary
confinement nine times for various infractions over a number of weeks. He collapsed and died on his last trip to the isolation ward after staff "assisted" him to do push-ups, the report said.