Children in no-man’s land
Commentary by Adam Tanous
When children finally cross that point of no return in
their minds, should it be the point of no return in our minds as well?
Juvenile violence is one of those sudden anomalies of
civil life we are ill prepared to handle. It is as if the times somehow
got ahead of us. We seem to have little inkling as to what to do with all
of the broken pieces when children open fire.
Why they are opening fire is an even more complex problem.
Certainly several factors must be involved: societal pressures, peer
pressures, access to guns, crumbling family structures, a numbing with
regards to the value of life, an adult population seemingly deaf to the
concerns of the young, an excessive exposure to "pretend
violence" and who-knows-how-many other forces.
But the subject here is, what do we do with the young once
they cross our societal bounds of acceptable behavior? The current trend
of most state legislatures has been to react with simplicity and ferocity,
a response that seems natural enough. It is hard not to answer to the
victims when they scream for justice. People are dying, after all.
And so, 47 states have passed laws to enable prosecutors
to try children as adults and, when they are convicted, to sentence them
to adult prisons and to terms comparable to adult offenders.
Lionel Tate, the Florida boy who at age 12 killed
6-year-old Tiffany Eunick, was sentenced to life in prison without a
chance for parole. Charles "Andy" Williams, the alleged killer
in the recent Santana High School shooting may face a similar fate. He is
being charged as an adult under California’s Proposition 21. These are
but two horrible cases in a string of bad cases.
While I agree that the iron fist approach is a solution of
sorts, I think it verges on blind justice—in the pejorative sense.
The blindfolded goddess of justice, Themis, is
symbolically and practically what we aspire to in our judicial system.
Impartiality is essential when we are dealing with adults making their own
somewhat-informed decisions in life. But perhaps the point is, with
children, we have to pull the blindfold down a bit. A little partiality
may be the only means for addressing the variable nature of juvenile
violence.
Our judicial system is one built upon reason. No longer
are crimes avenged; no longer is punishment fueled by emotion. Thankfully,
we have moved to a system where a neutral entity, the judicial branch,
administers justice. It is a system of deterrence, which implicitly
assumes rational behavior. We establish rules by which we can live
together so as to guarantee equality of freedom. Laws are at one and the
same time a reflection of our morality and a contract among citizens.
Further, crimes and the punishments for them are generally
established with reason in mind. Punishments are designed to fit crimes,
because we realize that citizens constantly make decisions about their
behavior. Action and consequence reside in the forefront of our minds.
And while murder seems more often than not an emotional
act rather than a rational one, most adults know, at least in an abstract
sense, that murder is a profoundly wrongful act. Conceptually, we can
imagine things like 15 to 20 years, life without parole, waking up
everyday in a tiny, cement room.
What does a 12 year old understand about prison? About
long spans of time? Does he truly know what taking someone’s life means?
Do they comprehend the power of a gun? Are they calibrated as to how much
trauma a human body can tolerate?
I think we rightly expect adults to have some common, if
rudimentary, understanding of these issues. Given the variability in the
way children develop emotionally and rationally, I am not sure we can
uniformly expect this of them.
There is a curious parallel to consider here: that of the
relationship between insanity and criminality. When it comes to murder,
insanity and whether we hold people responsible for their crimes or not,
the relevant legal standard is the M’Naghten Rule. Black’s Law
Dictionary defines the standard as follows: "an accused is not
criminally responsible if, at the time of committing the act, he was
laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to
know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it,
he did not know he was doing what was wrong."
I wonder how many of these young killers "know the
nature and quality" of their crimes. Should it matter that
"defect of reason" comes from disease or something as simple as
inexperience or youth? A mentally retarded adult who has committed murder
may not be held responsible for his actions under the M’Naghten Rule,
but a child, who also is unlikely to fathom his actions, will.
The easiest thing to do is lock child killers away in
adult prisons for years and years and years. Certainly, there are all
sorts of dangers implicit in that practice. We generally end up training
them to commit more crimes. Studies have shown that children in the adult
system are much more likely to continue a life of crime than those who go
through the juvenile system. Those costs, both in economic terms and in
the disruption of social life, are substantial.
It is clear the juvenile system is faltering or, at least,
is not prepared for the wave of juvenile violence that has washed upon us.
At the same time, putting children in the adult correctional system seems
inappropriate and likely to create a bigger problem down the road.
So what do we do with the confused, angry and armed youth
peopling our world? When children finally cross that point of no return in
their minds, should it be the point of no return in our minds as well?
Surely we can figure out a way to punish them and help them at the same
time.
