It’s Time to Stop Charging Children as Adults
By: Ryan Fan
Tags: Justice, Society, Equality, Nonfiction, Race

It’s Time to Stop Charging Children as Adults

Every child, no matter the crime, should be eligible for redemption and grace

Photo by David Veksler on Unsplash

The other day, a former student of mine, only 14 years old, was charged with first degree murder and is set to be tried as an adult. The kid is only 14 — so one of the first questions I gravitated to was why was he being tried as an adult?

To contextualize children being charged as adults, it’s important to understand the justice system. According to the New York Times Editorial Board, under New York law, children as young as 13 can be tried as adults if they’re charged with second-degree murder or anything worse. The same applies to some felony sex crimes — and all states have differing laws allowing minors to be charged as adults.

Of course, the practice intensified during the “tough on crime era,” namely the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. A viral case of a 15-year-old Black boy who killed two men on the subway and wounded a third led to widespread tough on crime reforms throughout New York. One of the most famous children prosecuted as adults was Korey Wise, one of the teenagers wrongfully convicted as part of the Central Park Five.

It hurt me to think about my student potentially suffering such a vicious fate. And it isn’t that I don’t believe in accountability and consequences — but by all measures, being 14 still means you’re a child. Of course, my student’s story is less nuanced than that of the unequivocal innocence of Korey Wise and the Central Park Five — his attorney said he was there. His attorney said he initiated the confrontation — but simply said he didn’t shoot the gun. I wasn’t there, so I can’t act like I know all the facts.

But again, to be 14 still means you’re a child. Where is God’s gift of mercy and grace here? According to Casey et al. at the Journal of Adolescent Research, adolescent brains are associated with impulsive and risky choices. They are less likely to exercise impulse control and assess risk and long-term consequences. According to Robertson et al. at Child Psychiatry and Human Development, being a younger offender is directly associated with mental illness. And putting aside morality for a moment — there’s also the effectiveness of trying children as adults. Teens arrested as adults are 34 percent more likely to be rearrested than teens tried through the juvenile justice system.

Many countries in Europe ban adult prosecutions for children. The U.S. stands as an exception — a country that had over 50,000 teens under 18 incarcerated in 2014, that disproportionately targets Black children compared to children of other races.

And then there is the question of justice — which is undeniably important. But how is strict justice going to bring a life back? The cause of the New York Times Editorial Board piece was the murder of Tessa Majors, a Barnard student, by three teenagers, two of whom were charged with second-degree murder after Majors was stabbed to death.

Without a doubt, the murder of Majors is tragic. But I can’t help but feel like fewer people would care if Majors wasn’t a white woman. It’s an anecdotal observation from living in Baltimore, a majority Black city, that fewer people care when the victim of a murder or violent crime is Black — a quintessential example of white privilege. The city I live in has more murders per capita than El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and it seems like no one cares.

In the closing words of the New York Times Editorial Board, “charging adolescents as adults makes the state crueler, not safer.” I will hold those words close as I follow my student’s trial. But it’s just a wider question for now — when should children be charged as adults?

According to Nicole Sclalabba at the American Bar Association, a juvenile is only tried as an adult under the consideration of the law under certain circumstances. While Sclalabba notes that juveniles were not always charged separately from adults in American history, progressive reformers of the penal system in the early 1800s got the penal system to educate and rehabilitate juveniles, and in 1899, the first juvenile court was created.

It was still an imperfect system, but in the 1970s and 1980s, a rise in violent crime got reforms passed to make it easier to try juveniles in criminal courts, leading to an era of punitive juvenile justice laws. Since violent crime has stabilized a bit since that time, the Supreme Court made executions of young people who commit murder banned in Roper v. Simmons in 2005. The Supreme Court later banned mandatory life without parole sentences for people who commit crimes when they’re 17 or younger in Graham v. Florida in 2010 for non-homicide offenses.

“But charging adolescents as adults makes the state crueler, not safer,” The New York Times Editorial Board says.

Even children charged and convicted of murder and other violent crimes should be eligible for redemption and grace — and it includes kids like my old student. We have to stop charging kids as adults, no matter the crime. Juvenile courts have been associated with greater access to rehabilitation and counseling and benefits to teens. It’s time to stop charging children as adults.

Takeaways

I wrote this piece because of my student who is being charged with an adult, and I know he is not an adult. I worry about his future, and yes — I worry that my student’s life is effectively ruined. He made a mistake that ended up costing another man his life, but if a child under 18 cannot buy alcohol, enlist in the military, or vote, they also shouldn’t be sent to adult prisons.

Following the decisions of Roper and Graham, the Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that even for juveniles convicted for homicidal offenses, juveniles without parole sentences are unconstitutional. It’s not like I don’t believe in consequences and accountability. But other options should be pursued — and hopefully state legislatures will stop letting prosecutors charge children as adults, or the Supreme Court will make another landmark decision.