Incarcerated Juveniles: How they are being treated (Chapters 5-8)

Hello again!

This week I read chapters 5-8. During this section of the book, we got some leads on the Walter McMillian case. Ralph Myers confessed in person to Brian Stevenson that everything he said in court was a lie. But Stevenson also introduced us to a new flaw in the criminal justice system: incarcerated children being tried and treated as if they were grown adults.

Charlie

Stevenson gets a call from a young boy's Grandma who is calling to see if he will help him her grandson's case.

Charlie is a young boy who is only fourteen years old. Stevenson doesn't mention his race, but from the topic of this book and based on the other stories he's told, I'm thinking he is black. He lived with his mother and stepfather, George, who was a local police officer. He was also an alcoholic. At night he would come home late, heavily intoxicated. But one night, George came home and punched Charlie's mom right in the face, knocking her down and on the way her head hit the kitchen counter. His mom lay on the floor bleeding and unconscious while George stumbled over to the bedroom and fell asleep. Charlie became scared because his mom wasn't breathing and her head wouldn't stop bleeding. He sat there "trembling" until he decided to go get the phone from the bedroom. Right as he was about to pick up the phone, he decided to open up the dresser drawer and pick up the gun that was nestled inside. He picked it up, put it to George's head, and shot him.

Charlie was tried as an adult and sent to a local county jail for adults, rather than being sent to a juvenile facility.

Throughout this chapter, we are constantly reminded of how young Charlie was.

"This boy seemed way too short, way too thin, and way too scared to be fourteen. I looked at the jailer, who seemed to share my surprise at how small and terrified the child appeared. I asked them to remove the handcuffs. Sometimes in jail like this, the guards resist uncuffing clients, arguing that it's not safe or permitted to take the handcuffs off a suspect during a legal visit... The guard didn't hesitate to take the handcuffs off this child before leaving the room." (p. 120-121)

This is an interesting point for Stevenson to include because not only does he emphasize how small and fragile Charlie is, but he mentions how the guards agree that he looks too young to be subjected to such punishment. Even prison guards who are trained to show no emotion and be stern are softened by the sight of a child in a prison: they shouldn't be there, that's not a place for a child to be. Stevenson chooses to refer to Charlie as "the child" rather than "the teen" because it helps readers understand just how out of place Charlie was in that maximum security adult prison. We can see that clearly if people think that sticking juveniles into severe punishment will help them learn, it will do the opposite. Instead of the punishment helping Charlie learn and grow to understand that what he did was wrong, he is being beaten down so much that rather than growing he is shrinking: "way too short, way too thin, way too scared to be fourteen". 

He makes Charlie seem even more like a damaged young child when he finally gets him to talk. Charlie is portrayed as a skinny little battered and bruised kid who remains emotionless and mute. Then the first thing we hear from his mouth is:

"There were three men who hurt me the first night. They touched me and made me do things." (p. 123)

This is heartbreaking because Charlie is too young to even have to deal with any of the topics and experiences that are being thrown at him. They are doing nothing to help him, if anything they are making him worse. These horrible experiences that he is being exposed to are going to have an effect on who he grows up to be. 

Thankfully, Charlie has a happy ending to his story. Stevenson was able to get the court to agree to send Charlie to a juvenile facility just a few days after he met him. One morning at church, he was telling the story of Charlie to the congregation and afterward a married white couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, came up to him and asked if there was something that they could do to help Charlie. They had lost a son to suicide and wanted to use their son's money towards helping Charlie. They were able to help him get his GED while he was in juvenile detention, and once he was released they paid for him to go to college.

Despite Charlie's happy ending, I was still deeply saddened and disturbed by Charlie's story. Charlie isn't the only one that has gone through or is going through this. His story drove me to do some research on other recent/current juvenile cases in which they were being charged for major felonies and treated as though they were adults.

In January of 2019 in Texas, there was a 12-year-old boy who was charged with capital murder after breaking into a professional boxer's home and killing him (Chuck). His name was never released because he was a minor. He was a black male, and on a Wednesday evening, he dressed up in black, covered his face with a bandanna, and broke into the home of John Duane VanMeter, a 24-year-old professional boxer (Chuck). It was suspected that he was attempting to rob the house, but what drove this boy to do it was unknown.

For those who may not know, capital murder is the most serious felony that someone can be convicted of. Capital murder is different from first-degree murder in that it usually involves special circumstances, like kidnapping or the murder of police officers on duty (Chuck). This boy's situation was seen as a special circumstance, seeing as how there was evidence that he was attempting to rob the house in addition to the murder.

This 12-year-old boy made the news because he was one of the youngest defendants to ever be charged with such a felony (Chuck).

In Texas, adults that are charged with capital murder are punishable by death. However, ever since 2005, juveniles are no longer able to receive the death penalty in the United States (Chuck). The cutoff age for being charged as a minor vs. being charged as an adult in Texas is age 14 (Phillips).

Instead of the death penalty, this boy could face up to 40 years in prison (Chuck). Many juvenile justice advocates pushed to help this boy avoid such a long sentence. Why? Jason Chein, a psychology professor at Temple University, studies adolescent brain development and decision making (Chuck). "Impulse control is something that we can see continuing to develop at least into mid- to late adolescence. You're going to see improvements in impulse control even up to 16 years old. That's when it starts to level off and look like that of an adult." (qtd. in Chuck).

We can see this idea in Just Mercy. Charlie didn't know any better. Of course, he understood the dangers of using a gun. He didn't realize the consequences of his actions, he just wanted to protect his mother. 

This Texas boy was only 12 years old. He still in the critical years of figuring out the world and may not have developed enough to really understand his actions and the consequences of those actions. Or, maybe he did know what he was doing. But being 12 years old, he still has the potential to be treated and directed in the right path. Is 40 years in prison going to help him with that?

No. 

For a 12-year-old, 40 years in prison is almost four times the age that they are. Imagine a child thinking about that and realizing that they are going to spend four times their age locked up. Of course, what this boy did is not in any way acceptable and he needs some serious treatment and help/rehabilitation, but is 40 years in prison really going to help this boy?

If the boy ends up being convicted, he will be in the juvenile system until he's 19 (Phillips). Once he turns 19, he will go back to court and the judge will then decide whether to transfer him to an adult prison or place him on parole for the rest of his sentence (Phillips).

I was not able to find what happened with this boy's case: whether he was convicted of capital murder or not. I just hope that wherever he ended up, he had access to the proper treatment and support that he needed.

This boy's story is quite different from Charlie's story. Charlie was just trying to protect his mother (his family), or so it seems. We don't know why the boy from Texas did what he did. But you never know the reasons behind someone's actions.

Juveniles are being tried and treated as adults or given extreme punishments with no consideration of their age whatsoever, to this day. Even though these kids have committed horrible crimes, should they really be punished so severely? Oftentimes the leading factor that drives the child to do something so horrible is for the sake of protection (like Charlie), not knowing any better, or behaving so because they were raised in an unstable home environment or are reflecting the behaviors of their parents. 

This is the way that the American criminal justice system and Americans in general view the incarcerated after they have committed their crimes. They are suddenly defined by their worst moments. But does this have to happen to kids? They don't know any better, their brains are still developing. Should we be punishing them and beating them down every day for their mistake rather than helping them through it or helping them to learn better and make it into a life lesson that they can grow from rather than a life-ending mistake?

One last thing -- a quote from Mrs. Jennings, after Brian Stevenson asked her why she and her husband were doing the things that they were doing for Charlie. She answered: 

"We've all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us. I know that some have been through more than others. But if we don't expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed." (p. 126)

This quote highlights one of Stevenson's main points: we shouldn't give up so easily on people who have made one mistake. Sure, it was a bad one, but does that one terrible act suddenly define their whole life, and who they are? Are they suddenly no longer the cute, kind-hearted, caring little kid that they once were? Is all hope for their future really lost? Or can we find a balance between punishment and treatment so that they can come out the other end with hope and the possibility of changing their way of life?

Charlie's story and the boy from Texas are just two examples from the many different stories about juveniles being charged with extensive crimes. There are so many young teens and kids that, to this day, are not getting the right home nurturing and it is causing them to act out and make bad decisions. These kids are then being abused by being tried as though they were adults and sentenced to life-ending years in prison. It's important to realize that what we are reading about in this book are not just stories that start and end on the page. They're stories that are continuing in today's world in many different versions. Everywhere, every day, people are being tried and punished for crimes that they didn't commit. We learned in this week's reading that there are children out there being tried as though they are grown adult murderers when really they are still developing young children with so much more to learn, process, and understand, and so many more years to live. Why are we letting young teens' lives be taken away if deep down inside, we have a nagging feeling that they should not be punished in this way?

Thanks for reading!

WORKS CITED:

Chuck, Elizabeth. "12-year-old charged with capital murder spotlights justice
     system ill-equipped for juveniles." ABC News, NBC Universal, 25 Jan. 2019,
     www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/
     12-year-old-charged-capital-murder-spotlights-justice-system-ill-n962886.

Phillips, Kristine. "A Texas boxer was shot to death in his own home. The
     suspect: A 12-year-old boy." The Washington Post, 5 Jan. 2019,
     www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/01/26/
     texas-boxer-was-shot-death-his-own-home-suspect-year-old-boy/.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau, 2014.