On Monday, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy released at new report that looks at the U.S. policy, now unique in all the world, of sending kids under the age of 18 to prison for life without any possibility that they might one day redeem themselves—the LWOP kids, Life Without Parole.

If you think I have continued to come back to this issue, you are right. And don’t expect it to end here. Moreover the LWOP issue is only a part of the juvenile justice issues we should be examining—an indicator. The real matter at hand is how we charge, adjudicate and sentence our nation’s young in general.

In all other areas of life, as a nation and as a culture, we wisely realize that kids are not ready to make adult decisions. We won’t let them drink, vote, have sex with adults, go to war, or enter into contracts. But we increasingly believe that, in the single realm of criminal justice, if a violent crime is involved, juveniles should be held to the same legal standard as an adult.

It doesn’t seem to matter than every single study and every shred of empirical evidence tells us that this policy is deeply flawed.

For the report click here.

And here’s a clip from the report’s abstract:

….[the authors] discuss the well-established principle that youth are different from adults, and explain how this principle is reinforced by adolescent brain development research. The authors address and dismiss arguments that harsh sentencing is necessary to protect public safety, as well as highlight troubling racial disparities and inconsistent sentencing application. In addition, they describe how such sentencing functions to undermine the United States’s moral standing, given that the United States is the only country in the world to sentence offenders under the age of eighteen to life without parole. Finally, the Issue Brief concludes with Ms. Kent and Ms. Colgan proposing an alternative to the practice of sentencing youth to life in prison without the possibility of parole

All this makes me think of Dennis Danziger’s student John Rodriguez. I don’t yet know for sure what Rodriguez did or didn’t do. I do know, from what Danziger and his wife have told me that John Rodriguez is an otherwise good kid with lots of potential. Whatever foolish and dangerous thing he did on the night in question, it resulted—thankfully—in no lasting injuries to anyone. Yet if the DA has his way, John swill pend the next 25 years behind bars.. If he did the full term, John would get out of prison when he is 43. And what kind of potential would he have then?

Last month, Newsweek’s Ellis Close wrote an excellent essay pertaining to the issue–=and in particular a report issued in New York about the abuses in that state’s juvenile justice system.

It is worth looking at here. Here is how it begins:

One day, treatment of young people who run afoul of the law may be guided by logic rather than politics, prejudice, and uninformed passion. That was the implicit message of a report delivered to New York Gov. David Paterson last month, just in time for Christmas. The report, from the governor’s task force on reforming criminal justice, came on the heels of a U.S. Justice Department investigation that found New York’s juvenile penal system to be tragically mismanaged.

Youngsters in custody were routinely assaulted by staffers. Beatings were so severe that teeth were knocked out, bones were broken, and some kids were rendered unconscious. The assaults were sometimes sparked by infractions no more serious than laughing or stealing a cookie. The incarceration and the primitive methods accompanying it came at a substantial cost: $210,000 a year per child. Wouldn’t it make more sense, task-force members reasoned, to reserve incarceration for those who posed a threat to public safety? For youngsters who are not deemed dangerous, other methods seem more reasonable. “The state should treat and rehabilitate them, not hurt and harden them,” wrote the task force.

Close points out that the state of Missouri has spent years pioneering a saner, more effective system for juveniles. Would that California would do the same.

IN OTHER NEWS that is not in the least encouraging, a California man—who the psych eval shrink suggested has poor impulse control due to his bi-polar disorder—stole a $2.99 package of shredded cheese and tried to snatch a woman’s wallet, and was sentenced to 7 years 8 months in prison. The man, who has a string of burglary convictions from 30 years ago, and has spent decades behind bars, was initially set to get 25-to-life under Three Strikes, but the psych eval managed to derail that madness.

AND ABOUT THOSE REHABILITATIVE PRISON PROGRAMS that, once completed, under the new law aimed at reducing California’s prison population, will allow some California prisoners up to six-weeks of their sentences. Only one problem, those who actually work in the programs, say that those same programs are being slashed to nothing in the state’s rush to budget cut.

GAY, YOUNG & HOMELESS – Though all homelessness is troubling, the problem’s disproportionate effect on LGBT young people is especially worrisome writes Lisa Gillespie in this article on the topic.

At each step in the now-infamous Genarlow Wilson legal saga, Douglass County prosecutor, David McDade, has behaved without any sense of decency or proportion. And now there’s a brand new development.

First let’s recap the underlying case: Genarlow Wilson is the football star from the state of Georgia, homecoming king, 3.2 grade point average boy with no priors who, at 17-years-old had the bad sense to have consensual oral sex on New Year’s Eve of his senior year with a schoolmate. His partner was a 15-year old girl who, like Wilson ran on the high school track team. According to both teenage participants, the sexual encounter was initiated by the girl, who was clearly having a night of questionable judgment herself.

Wilson was arrested for having oral sex with a minor-–never mind that he was a minor too. Incredibly, the offense carried a mandatory ten year prison sentence. Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation and sentenced to the required decade in lock-up. The law has since been changed to exclude teenagers, but the change doesn’t apply retroactively. As of now, Wilson has served nearly 29 months of his sentence. [For further backstory check my earlier posts here and here.]

After 28 months in prison, Wilson was fiinally set free by a sensible Monroe County Superior Court judge who reduced Wilson’s felony conviction to a misdemeanor. But then the state Attorney General Thurbert Baker and prosecutor McDade appealed the judge’s decision. So Wilson remained locked up. A few weeks ago, the young man’s attorney tried to get him out on an appeal bond, but the judge turned the bond request down. The Georgia State Supreme Court was to have heard the appeal in October.

Then today, suddenly there was good news. The State Supreme Court has moved up the appeal date by three months, to July 20—over the objections of the prosecutor. The court also decided to hold an expedited hearing on the Douglas County Superior Court judge’s decision to deny Wilson bond pending his appeal. (Here’s the AP story.)

Meanwhile, prosecutor David McDade continues to behave abominably. It seems that McDade’s original case against Wilson was greatly bolstered by the cooperation of Verna Cannon, the mother of the 15-year-old girl in question. Yet, after Wilson was sentenced, Cannon felt she’d made a mistake and talked to a local reporter about her thoughts on the case. In particular, she told the reporter that much of the reason she cooperated with the prosecution was because McDade told her that if she didn’t, he might charge her with neglect for letting her daughter attend an unchaperoned party.

In other words, he threatened her—in the nicest possible way.

When word of Cannon’s chat with the reporter got back to McDade, he sent two of his assistants to Cannon’s house to intimidate her into “clarifying” her remarks to the reporter about McDade’s alleged threats. Cannon refused to be pushed by the staffers’ goon-like behavior, and politely declined.

Now an audiotape of McDade’s staffers visit is floating around the Internet. According to this Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial, the recording ain’t pretty.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the audio and to part of the transcript.

UPDATE TWO: And just when you think things can’t get worse….this happens. (Sigh. Just follow the link.)

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