Youth in the Criminal Justice System
Dear Editor,
The criminal justice system is failing for young-adults in the United States. Excessive punishment impedes young Americans from becoming productive members of society. According to the National Conference of State Legislature (2018) nearly one-third of young adults have been arrested by age 25 and young adults, age 18-25, are the most likely age group to reoffend. Young Americans will be stuck in institutions that are not productive nor educational. Excess of laws and harsh mandatory minimum penalties, the U.S. imprisons young Americans at an astonishing rate. Compared with the juvenile criminal justice in Germany, the Unites States is far behind protecting our young adults. According to Richardson and Gill (2015) nearly 2.3 million people in prison overall, millennials make up approximately 38 percent of federal prison inmates, and more than half of all inmates in state prisons.
Brief History
The juvenile court system was created to rehabilitate young people and not to punish them. However, in the 1980s, the public view was that the juvenile court system was too lenient and that juvenile crimes were on the rise. In the 1990s, many states passed punitive laws, including mandatory sentencing and blanket transfers to adult courts for certain crimes (US National Library, 2013). For these reasons the punishment for the juveniles began to raise and create a disparity between the original goal that was rehabilitation towards punishment.
Case Studies
There are approximately 2,000 cases of juvenile that are living without parole, this is an insane number. That many individuals who are under age and will live for the rest of their lives inside a cage is something that may not happen in a country as the Unites States.
Roy Ayala was sentenced in California to serve life without the possibility of parole for a murder committed during the course of a robbery. He is Latino and was 17 at the time of the crime. He was then homeless and addicted to morphine. His dad beat him—sometimes to the point of unconsciousness. He had left home at 13 and “lived mostly on the streets.” As he puts it, “I was “searching for direction in the wrong crowd.” Now, at 26, he is “praying for a second chance to live my life back in society someday.”1 He has attempted suicide in the past. In prison, he writes poetry and reads a lot, but is otherwise idle all day. He receives no education or programming. He recently wrote the poem, featured on the facing page, about his life.
Sara Kruzan grew up in Riverside, California. She is bi-racial. She was raised by her mother, a Caucasian, who was addicted to drugs and abusive to Sara. Sara was placed in foster care as a teen. Sara has met her African-American father only three times in her life because he has been in prison serving time for serious felony convictions.
Since the age of 9, Sara has suffered from severe depression for which she has been hospitalized several times. She has attempted suicide on multiple occasions.
At age 11, Sara met a 31-year-old man named “G.G.” Soon after they met, G.G. molested Sara, and soon began grooming her to become a prostitute. At age 13, Sara began working as a prostitute for G.G. Sara had just turned 16 when she was convicted of killing G.G. Sara had never before been arrested. Sara says a friend of her then-boyfriend who was much older and a rival of G.G. was involved in the murder but never prosecuted. Sara was tried as an adult, and sentenced to the rest of her life in prison, even though the California Youth Authority (CYA) determined that she was “amenable to the training and treatment” they offered.
Evan Miller was a kid that lived in foster care with abusive parents that raped him. He tried to suicide several times as a child, but he failed. One time due to his frustration he killed his neighbor and he was sentenced to a life without parole.
Opposition Viewpoint