Treating Juveniles as Adults Was the Worst Idea in the History of the Criminal Justice System
Recently someone questioned what the arguments for and against treating juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system are. The context for this question is important: most jurisdictions in the United States (and many other countries, including western-style democracies) transfer juveniles accused of violent crimes (sometimes only the worst of such crimes) from the rehabilitation-centric juvenile system into the often brutal and harsh criminal system.
One would think such a ubiquitous policy would have strong proponents, making similarly strong arguments. But a quick search for both arguments from those supporting juvenile “transfer” or lowering the MACR (minimum age of criminal responsibility) and arguments opposing such actions, reveals a near-universal proclamation that treating juveniles as adults is the worst criminal justice policy decision one can make. It doesn’t accomplish a single thing its proponents claim it does. Rather, it increases crime and even actively incentivizes it. It creates thousands of young, traumatized, hardened and angry people, most of them men, and then denies them a route to meaningful post-carceral economic and personal security. Unsurprisingly, juvenile transfer is applied in the most racist ways possible. Some US states are rapidly raising the MACR in an attempt to stop the damage from the stupidity of treating juveniles as adults.
Thus, we can conclude that this is one of the most unbalanced controversies in policy discussions. The drive several decades ago to treat some juveniles as adults was motivated by public bloodlust for criminals and a “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality having nothing to do with research. According to Human Impact Partners, these laws were motivated by “sensationalized coverage of system-involved youth by the media, and crusading politicians who warned that juvenile ‘super-predators’ posed a significant threat to public safety.” Rehabilitation was alleged to not work, even though it actually did. The end result was a consensus based on no evidence.
And countless youth were compromised in the process. Employment after incarceration is necessary to avoid recidivism and provide economic stability, but juvenile transfer ensures the opposite. Moreover, punishing children as if they were adults is inappropriate, because neurologically and psychologically, they are not. The science here is complex, but in essence, different parts of the brain correlate to self-control, consideration of consequences, consideration of others, whether to fight the people around you, what kind of risks you take, and so on. The adolescent brain is different from both the child and the adult brains, and it’s going to keep growing and developing past 20 years old. The idea of a 12 year-old being deterred by the threat of adult transfer is ridiculous. At that age, some kids lack the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy altogether.
To say these policies have been counterproductive to actually controlling crime would be a huge understatement. While there’s one study showing that the threat of adult treatment deters older juvenile offenders, it shows a deterrent effect of at most 12 percent (compare that to the success rate of effective rehab programs elaborated below) and again, only at the older end. Human Impact Partners cites “large-scale studies” confirming “higher recidivism rates among juveniles tried and sentenced in adult court than among youth charged with similar offenses in juvenile court.” Study after study shows this increased recidivism. Last year the Juvenile Law Center tersely concluded: “Punishing children the same way we punish adults does not advance public safety.”
On the other hand, effective juvenile justice systems do what they’re supposed to do. Rehabilitation decreases crime by between 12 percent (the highest rate claimed by the deterrence of adult sanctions) and 50 percent — and this is inclusive of younger adolescents. According to the U.S. Department of Justice last year, “juveniles who received treatment showed an average 12 percent decrease in recidivism. This result, while not enormous, was positive, statistically significant, and large enough to be meaningful.” But for other researchers, the result is indeed enormous: according to Canadian Criminologist Rhea Adhopia in 2016, juvenile rehabilitation programs are twice as effective as incarceration, cutting recidivism in half.
Proponents of juvenile transfer often shift to saying that crime rates are not the point, that justice requires punishment to repair the social fabric damaged by crime. Therefore, punishing juveniles who “act like adults” in their violent crimes is appropriate. One derivative of this “punishment is good’’ argument is logically sound, though it implies a very pessimistic view of humanity: if we abolish state-sanctioned punishment like prisons, people will take retribution into their own hands. This will create an even more violent and retributive society governed by “an eye for an eye” logic. Though this argument does acknowledge that people have primal desires to see evil vanquished, we can debate the best way to do that.
Furthermore, even if people need to see that criminals are treated harshly as punishment in order to feel invested in our political order, we ought still to exempt juveniles from being used to fulfil that need, particularly as treating juveniles as adults massively increases their propensity to commit more crimes. Common sense is important here.
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