strongernow
05-02-2004, 09:27 PM
Former Newton County Juvenile Court Judge Virgil Costley has quizzed offenders as young as 12 on why they committed a terrible crime.
"They never have an answer. And if they had one, it wouldn't make any sense to us," he says.
Those 12-year-olds -- despite the enormity of their crimes -- are still children. They lack the capacity to make reasoned decisions.
If the 12-year-old boy charged in the murder of an 8-year-old neighbor in Carrollton is found guilty, he should be locked away. But the boy does not belong in either an adult court or an adult prison.
The clamor for justice in the senseless and heartbreaking killing of little Amy Yates is understandable. And so is the emotional outcry that the state widen the threshold under which a juvenile can be treated as an adult.
Georgia law now permits teens ages 13 to 17 to be designated as felons in Juvenile Court. Those teens can also be transferred as adults into Superior Court if they're charged with one of the "seven deadly sins," which include murder, robbery with a firearm and serious sex offenses.
The Georgia Legislature's 1994 decision to house children in adult jails was touted as a solution to the rise of young "super predators." But at the same time that Georgia lowered the age for adulthood for violent crimes, murders by teenagers were on the decline nationally.
As horrific as Amy's death is, the solution is not to redefine childhood and rewrite Georgia's criminal laws. Twelve-year-old murderers are as uncommon as they are unthinkable.
"I can probably count the number of cases where a 12-year-old killed somebody, other than accidentally, on one hand," says Rick McDevitt, president of the Atlanta-based Georgia Alliance for Children, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Described as troubled and prone to stealing things, the boy charged in Amy's death, if convicted, must be removed from the community and sentenced to a juvenile detention facility.
The law allows up to a two-year juvenile sentence for the boy, which many people, including Amy's parents, feel is inadequate to the crime. (It's possible that the boy could be held longer if the Department of Juvenile Justice felt he needed more time and won approval of the courts.)
The greater public policy question is not necessarily whether a 12-year-old should be locked away for two years, five or 10, but what is he going to be like when he comes out?
Now, Georgia offers a patchwork of mental health services to children. In its zeal to lock up teenagers in adult prisons, the state neglected the critical components of counseling, education and therapy.
Without mental health services and educational opportunities, long prison sentences only mold child criminals into career criminals.
A 25-year-old killer may be beyond redemption, but research suggests there's greater hope for adolescents. Eventually, most teen offenders will return to their hometowns. In their own self-interest, communities ought to invest in programs that halt teens' criminal tendencies rather than in prisons that harden them.
The evidence shows it's more cost-effective to divert kids to juvenile prisons rather than adult ones. In a Florida study, the U.S. Justice Department compared the outcomes of teen criminals in adult prisons with those in juvenile facilities. All had committed similar crimes. While about half of the teens sent to adult prison committed new crimes when released, only 37 percent of those who served their sentences in juvenile facilities did so.
If Georgia wants to stop violent juvenile crime, it has to start when children are in first grade. The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that violent juveniles were 14.5 when they made their first court appearance.
But their behavior problems surfaced at age 7, and they committed many minor offenses before building up to violent crimes. The early alarm bells in these kids went unheeded, and multiple opportunities for early intervention were missed.
From his bench in the DeKalb County Juvenile Court, Judge Robin Nash sees the squandered chances to help troubled children. He regularly reviews files of juveniles that contain psychological profiles by three or four different agencies.
"But nobody has looked at them together and tried to make sense of them all,'' says Nash.
Now, a mentally ill child becomes a hot potato, passed from one state agency to the next. From the Department of Juvenile Justice, it's only a short hop to the state Department of Corrections.
It's not yet clear how a 12-year-old boy in Carrollton might have gone from stealing bikes to strangling a neighbor. Eventually, if he is found guilty, a fuller picture will emerge that will probably reveal the warning signs were present and, worse, that they were ignored.
"They never have an answer. And if they had one, it wouldn't make any sense to us," he says.
Those 12-year-olds -- despite the enormity of their crimes -- are still children. They lack the capacity to make reasoned decisions.
If the 12-year-old boy charged in the murder of an 8-year-old neighbor in Carrollton is found guilty, he should be locked away. But the boy does not belong in either an adult court or an adult prison.
The clamor for justice in the senseless and heartbreaking killing of little Amy Yates is understandable. And so is the emotional outcry that the state widen the threshold under which a juvenile can be treated as an adult.
Georgia law now permits teens ages 13 to 17 to be designated as felons in Juvenile Court. Those teens can also be transferred as adults into Superior Court if they're charged with one of the "seven deadly sins," which include murder, robbery with a firearm and serious sex offenses.
The Georgia Legislature's 1994 decision to house children in adult jails was touted as a solution to the rise of young "super predators." But at the same time that Georgia lowered the age for adulthood for violent crimes, murders by teenagers were on the decline nationally.
As horrific as Amy's death is, the solution is not to redefine childhood and rewrite Georgia's criminal laws. Twelve-year-old murderers are as uncommon as they are unthinkable.
"I can probably count the number of cases where a 12-year-old killed somebody, other than accidentally, on one hand," says Rick McDevitt, president of the Atlanta-based Georgia Alliance for Children, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Described as troubled and prone to stealing things, the boy charged in Amy's death, if convicted, must be removed from the community and sentenced to a juvenile detention facility.
The law allows up to a two-year juvenile sentence for the boy, which many people, including Amy's parents, feel is inadequate to the crime. (It's possible that the boy could be held longer if the Department of Juvenile Justice felt he needed more time and won approval of the courts.)
The greater public policy question is not necessarily whether a 12-year-old should be locked away for two years, five or 10, but what is he going to be like when he comes out?
Now, Georgia offers a patchwork of mental health services to children. In its zeal to lock up teenagers in adult prisons, the state neglected the critical components of counseling, education and therapy.
Without mental health services and educational opportunities, long prison sentences only mold child criminals into career criminals.
A 25-year-old killer may be beyond redemption, but research suggests there's greater hope for adolescents. Eventually, most teen offenders will return to their hometowns. In their own self-interest, communities ought to invest in programs that halt teens' criminal tendencies rather than in prisons that harden them.
The evidence shows it's more cost-effective to divert kids to juvenile prisons rather than adult ones. In a Florida study, the U.S. Justice Department compared the outcomes of teen criminals in adult prisons with those in juvenile facilities. All had committed similar crimes. While about half of the teens sent to adult prison committed new crimes when released, only 37 percent of those who served their sentences in juvenile facilities did so.
If Georgia wants to stop violent juvenile crime, it has to start when children are in first grade. The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that violent juveniles were 14.5 when they made their first court appearance.
But their behavior problems surfaced at age 7, and they committed many minor offenses before building up to violent crimes. The early alarm bells in these kids went unheeded, and multiple opportunities for early intervention were missed.
From his bench in the DeKalb County Juvenile Court, Judge Robin Nash sees the squandered chances to help troubled children. He regularly reviews files of juveniles that contain psychological profiles by three or four different agencies.
"But nobody has looked at them together and tried to make sense of them all,'' says Nash.
Now, a mentally ill child becomes a hot potato, passed from one state agency to the next. From the Department of Juvenile Justice, it's only a short hop to the state Department of Corrections.
It's not yet clear how a 12-year-old boy in Carrollton might have gone from stealing bikes to strangling a neighbor. Eventually, if he is found guilty, a fuller picture will emerge that will probably reveal the warning signs were present and, worse, that they were ignored.