U.S. Among
Harshest for Sentencing Children
by Daniel Macallair
This article was previously published in the San Francisco Bay View.
"Sentencing children to permanent imprisonment is
inconsistent with civilized society."
To many in the United States, the country of
Somalia conjures up images of a primitive Third World country. So it may come
as a surprise to learn that Somalia and the United States share an unfortunate
commonality - they are the only countries in the world that refuse to sign the
U.N. Convention on the
Rights of the Child because of its ban on sentencing children to die in
prison.
Under the U.N. covenant, sentencing children, even those who
commit serious crimes, to permanent imprisonment is considered inhumane and
inconsistent with civilized society and thus rejected by the rest of the world.
According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,
there are now about a dozen people outside the United States and Somalia who
were sentenced to permanent imprisonment as children: South Africa has four,
Tanzania has one, and Israel has seven. In contrast, the United States has
2,270 children serving such a sentence, including 227 in California.
The United States is out of step with the rest of the
world in the treatment of children because of recent changes in American
political and legal culture. Although the legal capacity to sentence children
to permanent imprisonment existed before 1980, it was rarely invoked. This
changed with the rise of the conservative movement in American politics and its
adherents' strident belief in the deterrent effect of harsh sentencing
policies.
"The United States has 2,270 children serving such a sentence."
The rhetorical emphasis of conservative philosophy on
punishment and vengeance has created a political culture where politicians
compete over who is more ruthless in sentencing offenders. The public policies
resulting from this new political culture have led to the harshest sentencing
practices in U.S. history.
Nowhere are these harsh policies more evident than in the
treatment of children. Before 1990, few children were sentenced to die in
prison.
When recently asked to explain the United States'
noncompliance with international law on the sentencing of children to permanent
imprisonment, the Bush administration claimed that the sentences were reserved
for only the most hardened young offenders who "had committed gravely
serious crimes." Despite the Bush administration's claims, the evidence
suggests otherwise.
According to the Human Rights Watch study, 26 percent of the
children in the United States condemned to permanent imprisonment were
sentenced under the felony murder law. The felony murder law mandates that even
when someone is only marginally involved in a homicide, they are held to the
same level of responsibility as the primary perpetrator, even if they had no
intention to harm anyone and possessed no weapon.
European countries and many states have abandoned the
felony murder law as unjust, but it continues to be practiced in California.
"42 states allow children to be sentenced to prison
without the possibility of ever being released."
Justice in the United States is a function of individual
state laws and discretionary charging practices by prosecutors. As it is now,
42 states allow children to be sentenced to prison without the possibility of
ever being released. Of these 42 states, six - California, Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri - account for more than 1,500 of the
2,270 total.
Many of these children committed their crimes when they were
14 or younger, but the laws make no exception and show no mercy. Judges have no
discretion, and they must impose the mandatory sentence of life in prison
without hope of release.
In California, the decision to sentence children to die in
prison is often a function of the political culture of the county in which the
crime is prosecuted. Consider the case of Sara Kruzan. Sara was born in
Riverside County, where she was raised by an abusive, drug-addicted mother. At
the age of 11, Sara was befriended by a 33-year-old man who promised to take
care of her. After winning her trust, he proceeded to molest her and coax her
into prostitution. When she was 16, she killed him. After she was arrested, the
district attorney in Riverside County opted to ignore the extenuating
circumstances and sought to have her tried in adult court for first-degree
murder.
An evaluation by the California Youth Authority concluded
she was amenable to treatment in the juvenile justice system, but a local judge
- at the urging of the prosecutor - transferred her to adult court, where she
was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder. Kruzan is now 28 and a model
inmate, but she will spend the rest of her life in prison for the crime she
committed at age 16.
"The laws make no exception and show no mercy."
Like Kruzan, the children who commit serious crimes at a
young age are often the broken and battered survivors of horrendous childhoods,
who, if not for their crimes, would elicit pity and compassion. Had Kruzan's
case occurred in another county, the legal outcome may have been much
different. Because Riverside County takes a more rigid and unsympathetic
approach to sentencing than most other California counties, her sentence was
harsher than it may have been in another jurisdiction.
State Democratic Sens. Leland Yee of San Francisco and
Gloria Romero of Los Angeles have offered a bill abolishing the practice of
mandatory lifetime sentencing for children. The bill amends current law to
allow consideration for release after the child serves a minimum of 25 years.
Although the bill is a reasonable reform that has been adopted in other states,
it faces a difficult hurdle as the usual array of conservative interest groups
have lined up against it.
In considering this very modest and reasonable reform, the
governor and the Legislature should consider the words of Cesare Beccaria, 18th
century Italian philosopher and author of the treatise "On Crimes and
Punishments" (1764), who wrote that "laws seeking to regulate human
actions should not embrace savage measures."
Daniel Macallair is the executive director of
the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) and teaches in the
department of criminal justice studies at San Francisco State University. CJCJ
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that offers policy analysis, program
development and technical assistance in the criminal justice field. Contact
CJCJ at 440 Ninth St., San Francisco, CA 94103, (415) 621-5661 or www.cjcj.org.
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