jeveniles offenders

Despite a Department of Justice report that nearly 40% of juveniles in adult prisons were convicted of nonviolent offenses, there is abundant evidence that jailing minors alongside adult criminals makes them become more violent and less likely to be rehabilitated.

To be clear, I am not advocating leniency toward people who commit serious crimes.

Both these cases stirred controversy in Florida not because of the senselessness of the crimes, but because of the severity of the punishments: Brazill was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

Proponents of trying minors as adults frequently cite weaknesses in the juvenile justice system, saying it is an insufficient deterrent for criminally-minded youths.

Proponents of trying minors as adults frequently cite weaknesses in the juvenile justice system, saying it is an insufficient deterrent for criminally-minded youths.

More disturbing, a recent series by PBS Frontline, When Kids Get Life, reveals that the US is one of only a few countries in the world that sentences minors under the age of 18 to life in prison, and there are 2200 such convicts currently serving life sentences in the US. (According to the advocacy organization Pendulum Foundation, there are only 12 in the rest of the world.)

The sharp increase in minors tried in adult courts is due to a wave of state legislation in the 1990s that gave judges and prosecutors the ability to determine who should be tried as an adult, along with new laws assigning mandatory minimum sentences for certain types of convictions including first- and second-degree murder.

(This was the case with state attorney Barry Krischer of Florida's affluent Palm Beach County, where Nathaniel Brazill was prosecuted, who defends in this interview his famed zero-tolerance policy of trying minors as adults as often as possible.)

Often in instances where minors are tried as adults, the crimes themselves are evidence of immaturity, not malice.

In other areas of the law minors are viewed as mentally incompetent, a caveat our justice system takes seriously when deliberating the guilt or innocence of adult criminals.

Despite a Department of Justice report that nearly 40% of juveniles in adult prisons were convicted of nonviolent offenses, there is abundant evidence that jailing minors alongside adult criminals makes them become more violent and less likely to be rehabilitated.