US KIDS GET GROWN-UP JUSTICE

Juvenile Offenders Are Increasingly Ending Up In Adult Prisons

The day's consignment of young suspects arrives by van at a side entrance
of Baltimore's monolithic courthouse and they clank through the corridors,
each shackled to the inmate ahead, like a noisy, disconsolate centipede.

They are almost all black, mostly under 18, and are heading for the adult
courts where, despite their age, they will be tried and sentenced as
adults. It is a practice increasingly common in a country that is less and
less inclined to view youth as a mitigating factor for serious crimes.

According to new statistics from the United States justice department, the
number of under-18 defendants sentenced to long prison terms in adult
prisons doubled between 1985 and 1997. At the same time, the number of
juveniles locked up in cells with adult criminals while awaiting trial or
serving short terms has more than quadrupled.

Meanwhile the goal of rehabilitation within the juvenile system has been
sidelined. Brutal conditions have been unearthed in a series of youth
detention centres around the country. Hearings were under way last week
into a private facility in Jena, central Louisiana, after a judge found its
inmates were being treated "no better than animals".

Part of the problem is a lack of funds, but the tougher treatment of child
offenders is also the result of an underlying shift in policy during the
past decade. Almost every US state has passed legislation making it easier
for young suspects to be transferred out of the juvenile courts into the
less-forgiving adult penal system.

The policy shift was triggered by a sharp increase in violent crimes
committed by young offenders during the late 1980s. This youth crime wave
was accompanied by academic theories that the US faces a new generation of
"super-predators" - young Americans growing up in broken, drug-riddled
homes who have no scruples nor fear of authority.

These predictions have yet to materialise, and youth crime rates have been
on the decline for several years. Yet the trend towards harsher treatment
for young offenders continues. This month Californians voted by 62% to 38%
to go down the same road. From now on, prosecutors - not judges - will
decide whether children as young as 14 should be tried in the state's adult
courts and face adult sentences. Maryland passed similar legislation a few
years ago.

It is a trend that has drawn criticism from human rights groups. Rob Freer,
an Amnesty International spokesman, said: "It is inconsistent with
international standards [which] have been adopted by almost every country
in the world in the international convention on the rights of the child,
which 191 countries have ratified. Only the US and Somalia have not." The
adult system is nothing if not punitive. Under-18 inmates are five times
more likely to be sexually abused in an adult prison and eight times more
likely to commit suicide. At any one time there are usually about 150
juveniles in the 200-year-old Baltimore city detention centre fortress,
whose scandalous conditions were the subject of a damning report by Human
Rights Watch last year.

Mark Soler, a civil rights activist from the Washington-based Youth Law
Centre, said it was the worst prison he had seen in 20 years. "The level of
violence is scary. Incarcerated juveniles call it a dungeon," Soler said.

Joey N, a 17-year-old detention centre inmate said simply: "This jail's
crazy." His adult cell mates threw faeces at him until he begged to be put
in solitary confinement. Another 17-year-old prisoner, Terence B, told
Human Rights Watch: "You need to get the juveniles out of here. We can't
handle what the adults can handle. We ain't ready for that."

Proponents of "get-tough" policies say juvenile criminals have become far
more violent. Michael Bradbury, a district attorney in California who
backed the bill that allowed for more severe punishment of suspected
juvenile offenders, argues: "Juvenile truancy has been replaced with
violent rape and murder. We need to adapt the law so that youths who commit
adult crime do adult time."

However, many criminologists argue that the new policies simply do not
work. Studies in New Jersey and Florida found that recidivism rates are
highest among juveniles transferred to adult jails.

The get-tough school of thought, however, believes that the high recidivism
rate among violent juveniles merely confirms the original decision to send
them to adult prison. With the recent downturn in juvenile crime, less is
heard of the "super-predators" these days, but they continue to cast a long
shadow. During the past decade, state expenditure on prisons has risen by
nearly a third. Spending on higher education, meanwhile, shrank 18%.