The rebuttal of the presumption of innocence amongst under-aged children is done in cases when a child commits a serious crime. Thus, when a child between ages 13 and 16 commits a serious crime like murder or aggravated sexual assault, such a child is charged like an adult. In spite of this, such a process leads to serious consequences for these underage offenders who are often below their formative years. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of charging minors who commit serious crimes like adults. This will include the review of the implications and possibility for other methods to be utilized to reform such offenders.
Patterns of Juvenile Justice in the United States
Across the United States, thousands of children have been sentenced as adults and sent to adult prisons. Nearly 3000 nationwide have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 years old have been tried as adults and sentenced to die in prison, typically without any consideration of their age or circumstances of their offense.
EJI argued in the United States Supreme Court that death-in-prison sentences imposed on children are unconstitutional, and the Court has now banned death-in-prison sentences for children convicted of non-homicide crimes and mandatory death-in-prison sentences for all children. Trial courts must conduct new sentencing hearings where judges will have to consider children's individual characters and life circumstances, including age, as well as the circumstances of the crime. The Supreme Court wrote that, because of "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon."
Many young children in America are imperiled by abuse, neglect, domestic and community violence, and poverty. Without effective intervention and help, these children suffer, struggle, and fall into despair and hopelessness. Some young teens cannot manage the emotional, social, and psychological challenges of adolescence and eventually engage in destructive and violent behavior. Sadly, many states have ignored the crisis and dysfunction that creates child delinquency and instead have subjected kids to further victimization and abuse in the adult criminal justice system.
Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults. Some states set the minimum age at 10, 12, or 13. EJI believes that the adult prosecution of any child under age 14 for any crime should be banned.
Some 10,000 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America. Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult prisons than in juvenile facilities and face increased risk of suicide. EJI believes confinement of children with adults in jails and prisons is indefensible, cruel, and unusual, and it should be banned.
For children with parole-eligible sentences, unique release and re-entry challenges too often create insurmountable obstacles to parole and successful re-entry. Young people who have been in prison since they were adolescents need help learning basic life skills.
Negative Impact of Children Charged as Adults
There is empirical evidence which suggests that people who were thrown into jail and charged like adults spent their lives being viewed as criminals because most of them never really knew of any life other than life in jail. There is evidence that any time a child commits a crime, including serious crimes, there is the need for the child to be given some kind of adult guidance in order to put their lives together and create a better future.
Serious crimes and their implications are not very obvious to juvenile. Most of them are simply playing out elements of the society that is apparent to them. They still have a complete life ahead of them and they are most likely to grow up and make more informed and better choices. Therefore, they need to be given special guidance as opposed to being charged and treated like adult offenders who are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and the implication of what they are doing to the victims of their offence.
Juveniles charged like adults are often kept away from schooling and normal education. This is because they are most likely to be locked up in jails like adults. There is an erroneous view that such children might never be released into the society. Considering the case of a 12 year old child charged with murder like an adult. It is clear that such a child will go to jail and might never come out. So most people argue on the premise that such children should be denied all forms of normal education and must be kept in prison anyway without any form of education. Such a child will most likely build a picturesque mind and develop his worldview in ways that will lead to shaping up thoughts and ideas that are based on conversations with older cellmates and other prisoners who might have extremely bad mindsets and views that will have a negative impact on such incarcerated persons.
Aside the denial of basic services and actions, these children are vulnerable and can be subject to sexual abuse in prisons by older prisoners. Evidence shows that many children are opened to exploitation by older inmates. This is often something that most of the juveniles cannot resist but endure. It could have long-term consequences on these juveniles and can create problems that might never be resolved in the lifetime of such young offenders.
In cases where children are under so much stress and threat from other prisoners, the logical thing for correctional officers to do is to try to isolate these young offenders by keeping them secluded in an adult facility. Due to the lack of emotional maturity and the ability to survive the elements of solitary confinement, young people put under such strain tend to break down emotionally and this has long-term impacts and implications on them.
Charging and treating young offenders like adult create a negative self-image that these young people might never recover from. They enter the natural society with the label and tag over them – that they are former offenders and this might be something they can never recover from. This could have a very negative impact on their psyche and their self-expression which will make them view the prison as an environment where they will want to live in and build their lives. So some people become repeat offenders.
The myriad of issues that come with charging young people as adults has a very negative and destructive impact on the mental health of these children. They tend to have a mental challenge that might lead to problems for them in the future and some might never even recover from these problems and challenges. This is evident by the fact that most young offenders who are charged with adult-crimes like adults tend to consider suicide as an option and move closer to killing themselves than adults. Others build a negative view of law enforcement and this leads to distrust and further problems that might make them people who cannot settle properly into the society and the wider community.
Special Needs of Juvenile Offenders
Juvenile offenders have higher needs to be helped and corrected than the need to be punished and treated in ways that will be deterrent to others. This is because juvenile offenders might have 50+ years to live. In that period, it will be better for them to be productive than to be a liability to the society. Therefore, there are some specific needs that these children need to become responsible members of the society.
First of all, they need mental health counselling and guidance to get them to overcome emotional and psychological deficits they might have. These children must understand some things that normal children are expected to learn and appreciate as they grow up. There is a deficit and there is the need for this deficit to be addressed.
Also, issues like substance abuse and parenting and family problems must be investigated and handled in a unique and vital manner that will help the child to recover and regain a reasonable and appreciable life. Employment planning is also essential. The child involved in a serious offence will still need to have some skills that can be applied and utilized in building a career that will culminate in some kind of income generation. This will help to provide a process through which they can find something to fix their lives when they are released from prison.
Furthermore, the mindset and perspectives of young people below the age of 18 is different from what the normal adult has. This is because the adult can think and internalize things in a different manner that is comprehensive and can have far-reaching consequences on the actions they undertake and what they do. Therefore, there is the need for some kind of distinct approach to be employed in teaching children what to do and how to reform their lives which is different from the way adults are to be trained and prepared for a future and a life outside prison.
Approaches to Dealing with the Needs of Juvenile Offenders
Young offenders are likely to fall short of the ideals and the expected level of participation and engagement in trials if they are held to standards of adults. On the other hand, they are more willing to participate in studies and investigations that are meant to improve their lives and make them better people.
Therefore, there is the need to focus on a corrective system in dealing with juvenile offenders involved in serious crimes. This includes the application of major critical perspectives on the child’s own personality and make-up as opposed to trying to punish the crime or defining the child by the crime. For instance, things like calling a child a murderer or rapist is somewhat problematic. It is more helpful to understand what drove the child to commit the crime rather than rushing to draw conclusions that could further modify the child’s identity and destroy any hope of fixing the child’s problems and making him a worthy member of society again.
A corrective system must seek to understand the child’s history and background in order to define what drove the child to commit the crime and how the child can be reformed and made a more responsible member of society. The process must tell the child’s vulnerability, strengths and the resources of the potential facilities the child might be sentenced to. This indicates the child’s profile will be matched with the treatment processes and the reformation process that the sentencing will include or apply.
Understanding a juvenile offender is a complicated thing. This involve the examination of some of the deep and hidden sentiments and feelings in the child and what the aspirations of the child is. This requires the use of expert methods and processes like art therapy and dance therapy that will bring out some of the inner sentiments the child is holding inside.
Art therapy is about imagery and how it is utilized to get people to show what they feel and sense. This includes getting children to draw things and show how they feel and what their moods are. They can be used for diagnostic purposes and can be used to monitor the processes that have been applied on a child offender. This will help to get into the inner emotions and sentiments of the child for changes to be made where necessary.
Animal-assisted therapy is about the use of animals to get a juvenile to improve the social status, moods and emotions of their lives. The ability to care for and spend time and bond with other human beings is linked to the way a person bonds with various domesticated animals. Hence, this treatment, when properly observed can help a patient to improve aspects of his life and become a better human being.
Dance therapy is for relieving stress and getting an offender to also bond and link up to other people. Dance therapy is about getting people to de-stress and also do things that will connect them to other people. The sense of responsibility and relaxation can be an important tool that can blend very well with various forms of psycho-social therapy.
Specialized facilities must be set up for juvenile offenders. This includes special juvenile boot camps and other forms of entities that will provide reformation services that will get the child offenders to make the right choices and build an appropriate life. This will be a residential program that will involve checking the child and examining his or her development in order to help the child to be more productive and stay away from the factors that lead to the crime that was committed in the first place.
After release, there is a requirement for proper monitoring systems and measures to be put in place to track down on respondents and ensure they are properly being integrated into the society. This will include the examination of what the released child offender is doing and whether a plan to keep him or her productive is working.
Conclusion
Children charged as adults turn up to be worse and they often go through more serious circumstances after they are released or serve their time. Their emotional and weak mental health make them particularly vulnerable. Rather, it is appropriate for such offenders to be guided and their case to be understood and applied in a way that leads to a positive result. This include guidance and separation into special facilities. Also, such children must be understood and treated to improve their mental health and increase their chances of getting a life outside prison. This can be done through a combination of different methods and systems including animal therapy, art therapy and dance therapy.
Works Cited
Beauchap, Zack. STUDY: Throwing Kids In Jail Makes Crime Worse, Ruins Lives. 17 June 2013. Web. 13 April 2016. <http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/17/2166481/study-throwing-kids-in-jail-makes-crime-worse-ruins-lives/>.
Champion, Dean. Sentencing: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbera, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. Print.
Elrod, Preston and Scott Ryder. Juvenile Justice: A Social, Historical and Legal Perspective. New York: Jones and Bartlett, 2013. Print.
Whitehead, John and Steven P. Lab. Juvenile Justice: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
