High Court strikes down Juvenile LWOP for non-homicide cases!

This is welcome news for a Monday morning!! SCOTUSblog recaps the Graham v. Florida decision:

In Graham v. Florida (08-7412), the Court reverses and remands, in an opinion again by Justice Kennedy. The vote is 6-3, with Justice Thomas dissenting, joined by Justice Scalia and in part by Justice Alito. Justice Alito files a separate dissenting opinion for himself. Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, concurs, even though all three join the majority opinion, and the Chief Justice concurs in the result alone.

• Holding: It is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile offender to life in prison without parole when the crime does not involve murder, given the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.

Read the opinion here.

UPDATES:

Today's Talk of the Nation featured a discussion with Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project (and Kansas solicitor general Stephen McAllister) about the Graham holding, as well as the Court's decision about civil commitments for sexually dangerous inmates. Read the transcript or listen to the program here.

Also, read more Graham commentary from the Sentencing Law & Policy blog here.

A Case Study: Juvenile Life without Parole

A poignant video produced by California State Senator Yee. I am anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court Decisions.

Thanks for the notes of congrats, I really appreciate it. I also forgot to wish Cranky a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

GBOC Lightning Round: Friday Morning Edition

Kick off your Friday morning with another GBOC lightning round. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Item 1: "What is the Age of Responsibility?"
Wednesday's Talk of the Nation posed that very complex question to journalist Alan Greenblatt of Governing Magazine and Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg. The conversation came in response to Greenblatt's recent article describing the "mixed messages" young people receive from state and local laws that dictate different minimum ages for different behaviors (e.g., consenting to sex, drinking alcohol, voting, etc.). Of interest to criminologists, the experts discussed both the minimum legal drinking age and the processing of juvenile offenders as adults. In addition, Steinberg -- who appeared on NPR last year to criticize the adultification of youthful offenders -- explained how chronological age restrictions bear little correlation with developmental science regarding the maturation of adolescent brains; however, as meaningful tests for maturity are impossible to develop, chronological age is the only viable proxy for maturity we've got. Finally, the conversation touched on some of the issues we discussed here with respect to LWOP sentences for juvenile offenders. If you've got a few minutes, it's definitely worth a listen (or read).

Item 2: The High Cost of Capital Punishment
Speaking of LWOP sentences, last week the Death Penalty Information Center altered us to a recent NYT editorial encouraging states to abolish the death penalty based on economic considerations:

To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets...

According to the [DPIC], keeping inmates on death row in Florida costs taxpayers $51 million a year more than holding them for life without parole. North Carolina has put 43 people to death since 1976 at $2.16 million per execution. The eventual cost to taxpayers in Maryland for pursuing capital cases between 1978 and 1999 is estimated to be $186 million for five executions...

A Republican state senator in Kansas, Carolyn McGinn, pointed out that her state, which restored the death penalty in 1994, had not executed anybody in more than 40 years. In February, she introduced a bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole. The bill gained considerable attention but stalled. Similar arguments were made, unsuccessfully, in states such as New Hampshire and Maryland. Colorado considered a bill to end capital punishment and spend the money saved on solving cold cases. But this year, only New Mexico went all the way, abolishing executions in March.

I don't have much commentary about this, other than to add that financial considerations provide lawmakers who oppose capital punishment a more palatable platform for public opposition than, say, moral appeals. Thoughts from others?

Item 3: Say it Ain't So, Joe!
Bad news yesterday for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (he of the pink clothing policies for DUI offenders and, more importantly, the bobblehead on Velma's desk):

Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff's department have had an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security since 2007 that allows his department to enforce federal immigration laws. But Arpaio says the federal agency is moving to revise the agreement to limit that power to checking the immigration status of inmates already in his Phoenix jail...

Now he faces a Justice Department investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona is suing the sheriff over immigration raids conducted by his department. The class-action lawsuit alleges that Arpaio has abused the power delegated to him under his agreement with Homeland Security, known as the 287(g) program.

Hmmm. Perhaps "America's Toughest Sheriff" is about to become a little less tough? Interesting to see how this develops.

Item 4: President Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize!
And he's only the third sitting president to do so.

(I'm sure Scooby, in particular, is thrilled.)

Answer: Yes

Question: Does life without parole for minors who didn't kill constitute cruel and unusual punishment?

There. I've just saved the U.S. Supreme Court the trouble of deliberating about whether the practice -- which is singularly American, by the way -- of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole (LWOP) for non-lethal crimes violates the 8th amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

At the risk of sounding flippant, it is genuinely inconceivable to me that this is even a debatable issue, let alone one that must be heard by the Supreme Court. What is more, not only will the constitutionality of juvenile LWOP sentences be debated by the High Court, this issue is already being heralded as an important test for newly-appointed Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

[Juvenile LWOP is] an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder....

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court's tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

It is difficult for me to articulate how angry that last passage -- and its logical implications -- makes me. I often talk in my classes about how politically poisonous the "soft-on-crime" label is, and about the extent to which it is disproportionately applied to liberal and/or Democratic politicians, though I rarely have a concrete example of such alignment. Yet here we have the LA Times coming right out and equating conservatism with "tough-on-crime" measures and inferring that liberalism encompasses the opposite perspective (read: "soft-on-crime"). What infuriates me most about that false dichotomy is that we know based on sound empirical evidence that "tough-on-crime" measures (e.g., juvenile transfer, mandatory minimum sentences, three strikes, et al.) often are woefully ineffective (not to mention expensive and, in some cases, actually increase recidivism risk). But liberal (or any other) opposition to these policies is not labeled "sensible-about-crime," but instead gets hit with that deadly "soft-on-crime" label, so that what should be a serious debate about very serious policies devolves into a "good guys/bad guys" battle over who is actually for, you know, safer streets. (Hint: it's not the candy-ass, pinko lefties.)

Just when I thought my anger had reached its crescendo, I kept reading:

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

"This is a hidden group. They don't get a lot of attention because there was no homicide," said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners....

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida's lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were "threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

That's right. Screw kids' constitutional rights -- we want our tourism dollars.

P.S. I want to be clear about one thing: I don't mean that the LA Times writer personally is equating conservatism with the "tough-on-crime" stance, but rather is reporting about that relationship as if it is commonly accepted, which I believe it is. Obviously the writer says nothing about liberalism being "soft-on-crime" -- in fact, he states that liberal opposition stems from policies that are perceived to "go to far" -- but the problem is that this is how the debate plays out in public discourse.

Jena Six Back in the News

I was just listening to CNN and heard that 5 of the 6 defendants in the Jena 6 case are close to entering pleas relating to the case. I was curious if any of the six were charged with hate crimes and was surprised to find out that the answer to this question was no. Even more surprising, my very quick scan of the news articles I searched indicated the only "hate crime" discussion was around the original incident when the noose was hung from the tree. It seems that this original incident did not result in hate crime charges because of the age of the defendants (all juveniles not eligible to be certified as adults - fyi, I am embarrassed to say I only recently learned juveniles cannot be charged in federal court....good or bad I will not conclude. I just didn't realize that was the case).

Maybe there was a discussion on charging the "Jena 6" with hate crimes (age notwithstanding) and I missed it, but I simply cannot believe anyone would conclude this did not meet any such definition. For what is worth, I don't think anyone should be charged with hate crimes, including the Jena 6. I think it is quite simply the worst piece of federal (political) legislation ever written. Ok, maybe "worst" is a bit strong but it is close at a minimum.

PS: Dr. H, I MISSED the man-step post you did a while back. That quite simply is the best commerical of all time! As you suggest, you need to lighten up!

Pedophilia, Marriage, and the Law

In Saudi Arabia, it's not a crime to have sex with a child.

...as long as you're married to her.

Saudi courts refused to annul a marriage between an 8-year-old girl and her 47-year-old husband. Here are remarks on the topic from the country's reigning cleric:

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks last January quoted in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

Al-Sheikh reportedly made the remarks when he was asked during a lecture about parents forcing their underage daughters to marry.

"We hear a lot in the media about the marriage of underage girls," he said, according to the newspaper. "We should know that Sharia law has not brought injustice to women."

He uses the term "injustice to women". I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

Thankfully, women have more freedom to speak out than in other countries in the Middle East. Organizations such as Human Rights First are working to change Saudi law, but the struggle is uphill.

On a personal note, I've been watching the news about women's rights in Saudi Arabia since my alma mater, the University of Texas, accepted $27 million to partner with King Abdullah University in Ryadh. Upon hearing criticisms about an American university working in a country in which women's rights are routinely denied, officials at KAU stated that women will have equal rights on campus, and they hope those rights will spread to the rest of the country.

Color me pessimistic.

Another Young Homicide Offender to be Tried as an Adult

An 11-year-old boy has been accused of killing his father's girlfriend, who was 8 months pregnant at the time. Under Pennsylvania law, this boy will be charged as an adult (anyone over 10 can be charged as an adult in PA for committing a homicide).

I've blogged about this previously, so you may know that I feel very strongly that trying juveniles as adult is the wrong thing to do.

This detail is particularly troublesome:

The weapon was a youth model 20-gauge shotgun, designed for use by children, that belonged to the boy, according to investigators.

We could certainly debate the second amendment on this one, but personally I'm just hoping states will begin to raise the minimum age to be tried as an adult back up to a reasonable level (or eliminate them completely).

The Pennsylvania code (42 Pa. C. S. Sec. 6302) is silent on where a child found guilty as an adult would be incarcerated. Perhaps some legal-types out there can shed some light on this.

Juvenile Justice Scandal in PA

Last night in class a student (thanks, Matt!) alerted me to this story out of Pennsylvania, in which two Luzerne County juvenile court judges allegedly were taking kickbacks for sentencing offenders to privately-owned juvenile detention facilities:

Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile offenders....

Prosecutors described a scheme in which Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the county-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care LLC to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was overly harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters’ constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before, and some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it. Many of the children didn’t have attorneys.

Wow. Those are some shocking allegations. Here I thought Blago's pay-to-play scheme was bad...and now we've got a potential pay-to-sentence scheme? Yikes. Speaking of which, does anyone have any thoughts about what might happen to the convictions/sentences issued by these judges if they are in fact found guilty of accepting kickbacks?

What?!?!?

This past Saturday, a 14-year-old boy spent about 5 hours on duty with the Chicago PD after having successfully convinced officers at one station that he had been transferred there from another precinct. I swear I am not making this up:

The boy, who has been charged as a juvenile with impersonating an officer, walked into the Grand Crossing (3rd) District station, 7040 S. Cottage Grove Ave., dressed in a Chicago police uniform, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. The boy, who reported for duty about 1:30 p.m., partnered with another police officer for about five hours.

The boy identified himself as an officer from another district but was detailed for the day to Grand Crossing and also was savvy enough to sign out a police radio and a ticket book, according to a source. The source also said the boy went on traffic stops with the officer he went on the street with....

Police described the boy as a former "police explorer," which means he was part of a community program run through the police department's Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) that allows youth to interact with Chicago police officers. He was part of the explorer program in 2008 in the Englewood (7th) District.

That last part I bolded because it is too funny to miss -- he'd participated in a program designed to increase interaction between (at risk?) youth and police officers. Technically, I suppose, his is a success story of sorts -- you can't have much more interaction with police officers than actually working as one.

Be sure to check out the linked article from the Chicago Tribune for video of the press conference in which the young man's actions that day are described, and this NPR interview with a Tribune reporter where it is revealed that the youth "had a great love of police [and] had been watching COPS for years." Unbelievable...

Nathaniel Abraham Sentenced

Speaking of the treatment of juvenile offenders, it's time for an update on the Nathaniel Abraham case. Earlier today Abraham -- who "became something of an experiment in juvenile rehabilitation" after being tried and convicted as an adult for a murder he committed at the age of 11 -- received four to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking. Though tried and convicted as an adult in 1999, Abraham was sentenced as a juvenile in 2000. He was incarcerated in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility until he turned 21 in January 2007; upon his release he received many unprecedented social supports including state-funded rent and college tuition. However, this past summer he was arrested on drug charges after officers discovered 254 ecstasy pills in his possession:

An obviously frustrated judge this morning sent Nathaniel Abraham to prison for four to 20 years for drug trafficking, telling the 22-year-old that he had betrayed his family’s trust and squandered the opportunities society had given him.

“Quit destroying what other people built for you,” said Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Daniel O’Brien. “Quit it!” The sentence was a year longer than the minimum guidelines.

GBOC Lightning Round, Episode Four

This week brings a shortened work week and a nice, long holiday weekend -- what a perfect time for another GBOC Lightning Round! (See previous rounds here, here, and here.)

Item 1: Office of Urban Policy

Recently, Obama transition team leader Valerie Jarrett discussed with NPR one of the new positions being created by the incoming administration: a federal Office of Urban Policy:

Jarrett said Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy that will be charged with focusing on cities and "have a comprehensive approach to urban development."

It is unclear who will lead the office, which will be tasked with advocating for cities and targeting programs in a "logical and systematic way," but it is a key position, according to Jarrett.

"For those of us who have worked in city governments across the country, we recognize how invaluable that person will be," she says.

Though perhaps an unsurprising decision for a president-elect who hails from Chicago, the creation of this office has much potential for addressing crime issues at the federal level. One measure of the extent to which the Office of Urban Policy will focus on crime (as well as poverty, a key correlate of urban crime) is the background of the person selected to lead this office. I'm very curious to find out who Obama names to fill this post.

Speaking of cabinet appointments, I'm equally curious to find out who Obama selects for "Drug Czar" (a.k.a. director of ONDCP). I've got my fingers crossed that it will be a criminologist or other social scientist who actually studies drug policy, and not an ex-Secretary of Education, a state governor, an Army general, or a Department of Education official*.


Item 2: The 8-year old boy in Arizona
ShockProf recently blogged about this case, so I don't have too much to add at this point. However, Michelle at Public Criminology reminds us that a similar case unfolded in Chicago a decade ago:

the defendants in that case were two 7- and 8-year-old chicago boys. the police attained confessions from these two young boys for the muder of 11-year-old ryan harris who was killed while riding her bike in their neighborhood. the charges against the boys were finally dropped when semen was found in the victim’s underpants, and prosecutors were forced to acknowledge that it was unlikely boys so young could produce semen. so how much were those confessions really worth?

How much, indeed. This also speaks to the question raised by Michigan Family Doc in the comments to ShockProf's original post.


Item 3: Nate Silver: Stats Lovers' Biggest Crush?
I'm not sure how many of you followed FiveThirtyEight.com during the election season, but if you're are a stats lover (unlike me), you'll adore this political data-crunching site run by baseball statistician (and East Lansing native!) Nate Silver. Based on statistical analyses he performed on polling data, Silver produced shockingly accurate predictions of the 2008 presidential and congressional races. Want more? In a recent post, Silver used regression analysis to predict the winner in the undecided Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota. His forecast? Franken will win by 27 votes:

We can address this phenomenon more systematically by means of a regression analysis. In the regression, we are attempting to predict a variable I've defined as franken_net, which is the net gain by Franken per 10,000 ballots cast in that precinct. The independent variables considered in the regression are as follows:

t: the proportion of the two-way vote received by Franken in the initial count (e.g. excluding votes for third parties)

c_f: the number of challenges initiated by the Franken campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

...Suppose that the number of challenges is zero -- as will happen once the state canvassing board finishes considering all such challenges in December. In this case, all terms in the regression equation reduce to zero, except for the constant term and t, which is Franken's share of the two-way vote in that precinct. We are thus left with the following:

franken_net = t * 8.922 - 3.622

...When we plug in a t of .499956 -- Franken was picked on just slightly very less than half of the ballots during the initial count -- we get a value for franken_net of .837. That is, Franken will gain a net of .837 votes for every 10,000 cast. With a total of 2,885,555 ballots having been recorded in the initial count, this works out to a projected gain of 242 votes for Franken statewide. Since Norm Coleman led by 215 votes in the initial count, this suggests that Franken will win by 27 votes once the recount process is complete (including specifically the adjudication of all challenged ballots).

c_c: the number of challenges initiated by the Coleman campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

See? I told you -- totally crushworthy for folks who love statistics! It makes it even cooler that his real love is baseball statistics. You can watch him chatting up Colbert here.

OK, that's it for now: comment away!

*Though, I can't be too hard on John Walters -- he's a Spartan, after all.

What's In A Name?

Back when I was a new graduate student, I was tasked with preparing a data file for analysis. It contained every juvenile arrest in a particular not-to-be-named state for 10 years. In order to match juveniles across years and study rearrest, we had their names and birth dates. I even had a hard copy printed on the lovely continuous-feed printer paper you see on the left.

One of my favorite hobbies back then was to skim the names and look for, let's just say, "outliers". Some of the names I remember of these young delinquents seemed fated for a life of crime. Because I can't print their actual names (Hello, IRB! I know you're watching!) and also because I can't remember them exactly, here's a few close approximations¹:

• Jesse James Jones
• Krystle Carrington Smith
• Alexis Carrington Smith (twins)
• Orangejello Browning
• Lemonjello Browning (again, twins)

So, you get the drift.

Today while browsing the Smoking Gun, I discovered a story about this man.

Name your children carefully, people.

(P.S. On a totally different topic, I'm watching 30 Rock while I type this. Best quote: "Stop patriciding!")

¹ Any similarities to actual names of real people is purely coincidence. Don't sue me.

Arizona Poised to Try 8 Year-Old as an Adult

Back in June Dr. Huginkiss blogged about Nathaniel Abraham, who shot and killed a man at age 11 in 1997. He was arrested again this past June, this time for drug distribution (carrying over 250 tablets of Ecstasy in his trunk). He plead guilty of possession rather than face trial for distribution, and his attorney thinks he'll probably get around three years in prison.

[A quick aside: I'm struck by the image of him in this article and how similar he appears to the sad, 13 year-old boy who was tried for murder in 1999.]

At that time, Nathaniel was the youngest person ever to be tried for murder. Sadly, that record may soon be broken as Arizona police are urging prosecutors to charge an 8 year-old as an adult for murdering his father and a family friend after he confessed to killing them. However, the same police department questioned the boy without an attorney or his mother present, so it is unlikely the confession will be admissable in court.

So, we have two potential truths to this crime:

First possible truth: the child really did kill his father and another adult (supposedly, the shooting was "execution-style"). If that is the case, what's the justification for trying an 8 year-old boy as an adult? Given that many states are repealing or increasing ages for juvenile waiver, it seems Arizona is out of touch with sentencing philosophy for juveniles. I just hope the justice system doesn't fail this young man as it has failed so many others in the era of "get tough" policies for juvenile offenders.

Second possible truth: the child is innocent. As the mother of a 7 year-old, this case makes me nauseous. I picture my son finding his father's body, arrested for the crime, sitting in jail awaiting trial, shackled in court... ugh. It's too much.

I can only hope the State of Arizona gets its act together for the sake of this child and all the others who come in contact with the justice system.

FYI: Juvenile Justice Issues on NPR Today

If you're by the radio or computer today, the 11:00 hour of the Diane Rehm Show on NPR will feature a discussion about juvenile justice with Laurence Steinberg of Temple University. From the show teaser:

An expert on adolescent development explains why juvenile justice should be grounded in the best available psychological science rather than the harsh and ineffective policies of the past two decades.

Dr. Steinberg is co- author (with Elizabeth S. Scott) of a new book called Rethinking Juvenile Justice.

Early Onset Criminality

A student sent me this video today and I just loved it. Because this kid is from Pap's neck of the woods, I sent it to him and we have been laughing and talking about it so I thought I would share with the rest of you. This would be a great video to show during a discussion about age and crime or developmental theory. I always tell my students that early onset of developmentally inappropriate behaviors are a strong risk factor for future deviant behavior. Stealing a car at age 7 is a good example...

Friday CJ Funnies, Part II: More Musical Madness

Pop quiz, hotshot: how many different theories of juvenile delinquency can you identify in the following clip?

GBOC Lightning Round, Take Three

Over the last few weeks I've compiled a list of stories I've been meaning to share, but I haven't quite found the time to write about each one. So, rather than let these stories go unblogged (gasp!), let's commence another GBOC Lightning Round! (See previous rounds here and here.)

Item 1: Criminology, Genocide, & Darfur
The other day I received in the mail an advertisement for the forthcoming book Darfur and the Crime of Genocide by John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond. I am really looking forward to reading this book. Recently I have been part of an effort to boost the level of activism in one of the feminist organizations to which I belong, partly in response to the brutalization of women and children happening in Darfur and in the Congo. I share the sentiments of Robert Sampson, who wrote in his endorsement:

"Why has the field of criminology ignored genocide for so long? The answer to this question has important implications for theories of crime and international policy alike. The terrible tragedy in Darfur serves as the motivation for Hagan and Rymond-Richmond to trace the intellectual history of competing approaches to genocide, from the pioneering work of Sheldon Glueck on Nazi war crimes to controversies over official reaction to atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and now Africa. A call to action, Darfur and the Crime of Genocide is disturbing but necessary reading for all those concerned with international justice and a more general criminological conception of collective responses to crime around the world." --Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University, Henry Ford II Professor of Sociology

Item 2: "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower"
A colleague forwarded to me this Atlantic essay about the challenges of teaching students who by most estimations should not be in college. Writing anonymously, the author discusses the cultural shift in recent decades that has made college attendance compulsory for many students -- even those poorly suited to higher education -- and the ramifications of that shift for the faculty members who must evaluate the academic performance of these students. In particular, the author discusses the challenges of grading papers written by students with remedial writing skills. An excerpt:

America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.

Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

My guess is that most of us would recognize more than a few of our students in this essay...

Item 3: Kids Count Data & Juvenile Justice Reform
A few weeks ago the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its 2008 Kids Count report, an annual state-by-state survey that evaluates the well-being of children using a variety of indicators: employment, education, health, poverty, and so on. Criminologists may be particularly interested in the juvenile incarceration data. For example, according to a Detroit Free Press article:

Among the most alarming trends: Michigan continues to incarcerate kids at a much higher rate than the national average and often for nonviolent crimes.

There are 137 children per 100,000 in some sort of state facility or detention in Michigan, compared with the national average of 125 per 100,000. That puts Michigan 33rd in that category.

This report might be a useful teaching tool, as the website allows users to generate profiles by state, so that you can see how children in your particular state (or, if you live in a large enough metro area, your city) are faring. Finally, accompanying the report is a thoughtful essay, "A Road Map for Juvenile Justice Reform", that also includes a state-by-state summary of child well-being indicators.

Item 4: Supreme Court Bombshells!
As Velma noted earlier today, this week the U.S. Supreme Court rendered two opinions particularly relevant for criminologists:

(1) In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court banned capital punishment for child rape, stating that such punishment is disproportionate to the crime and therefore constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment.

(2) In District of Columba v. Heller, the Court struck down Washington DC's ban on handgun ownership, ruling that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms extends to individuals.

I will leave the commentary about the Heller decision to the gun experts (and enthusiasts?) on the blog, and instead will share my thoughts about the Court's death penalty decision. Though I've disclosed my secret retributionist stance toward child rapists, I agree with the Court's decision. (I'm sure that Justice Kennedy and the four justices who joined him in the majority are relieved to know that I approve of their reasoning.) As several analysts have noted, because most child rapes are committed by someone the victim knows (often a relative or close family friend), asking a child to testify against the assailant with the knowledge that a conviction could lead to that person's execution understandably would cause undue emotional distress for the victim. Much as my maternal instincts might favor stringing these guys up on the courthouse lawn, the rational part of me knows that it would be utterly inhumane to put child sexual assault victims in a position where telling the truth could get their father, uncle, or other loved one killed, no matter how much we might think that person deserves it.

That's all for now. As always, I look forward to reader comments!

Totally Unshocking Crime Headlines, Vol. 10

"[Nathaniel] Abraham arraigned on drug charges"

A refresher: In 1997, 11-year old Nathaniel Abraham shot and killed 18-year old Ronnie Greene, Jr. Two years later, at the age of 13, Abraham became one of the youngest people ever tried and convicted as an adult in the U.S. -- and the youngest ever in Michigan. Though tried as an adult, Abraham received a juvenile sentence in January 2000: he was incarcerated in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility until his 21st birthday, after which he was released in January of last year.

Naturally, at the time of his trial Abraham gained national (and international) notoriety, propelled in no small part by defense counsel Geoffrey Feiger. (Who can forget the image of an avuncular Feiger leading a cardigan-clad Abraham into court by hand? A stroke of theatrical brilliance if ever I saw one.) However, Abraham caused an equally big media stir last year for the outlandish outfit he wore upon his release, which many observers interpreted as a tasteless (and egomanical) taunt to the public. As if to underscore Abraham's prominence in the public consciousness, he was personally summoned by Oprah Winfrey to a private meeting with Greene's relatives, during which Winfrey convinced Abraham to apologize to the Greene family. Needless to say, this young man was under far more public scrutiny than the average recently-released offender.

However, Abraham also received far more benefits than the average recently-released offender as well -- namely, state-funded rent and college tuition:

[Abraham] is being given free services through a Foster Care Demonstration Project. The pilot program is designed to help Wayne County foster care children who are phased out of the system at age 18 but still need the support of the state....

Under the program, Abraham will be eligible for two years of free rent, full college tuition paid by Michigan Rehabilitation Services through age 25 and food stamps, which he has applied for. He must live in Michigan and attend college in the state to remain eligible in the program.

And yet. And yet. And yet last week he was picked up on drug charges -- specifically, possession with intent to distribute ecstasy:

Undercover officers were working surveillance at about 1 a.m. in the neighborhood where there had been three separate armed robberies recently, when one of them witnessed what appeared to be a drug sale between Abraham and a man on a bicycle.

Abraham, 22, had parked a red 1970 Cadillac convertible in the parking lot of a Sunoco station on North Perry Street just south of Pontiac Northern High School. After the officers witnessed the exchange, they called for additional officers and moved in on Abraham, who was standing behind the vehicle with the trunk open. As the officers approached, they asked to see Abraham’s hand, and he said he was just changing a tire.

“He didn’t see the guys coming up behind him, and he threw away a bag,” said Pontiac police Sgt. Kevin Braddock.

When officers recovered a purple Crown Royal liquor bag, they found inside 254 individual tablets of the street drug ecstasy. Police said the pills typically sell on the street for between $10 and $30 each. Abraham was arrested without incident, and the vehicle, which did have a flat, was impounded.

Since his release, the Michigan Department of Human Services has spent $1,200 on Abraham – money that helped him set up an apartment and paid his rent, said DHS spokeswoman Maureen Sorbet.

And really, how many people expected any other outcome? Though his mentors and supporters are "shocked and devastated" that Abraham failed to make good on his promise to stay clean (by -- what else? -- becoming a famous rapper), he exhibited many warning signs of failure:

Looking back on the year, Abraham says he tried college, one semester at Wayne State University last fall, but chose not to reapply to focus on his music. He is also writing stories that he hopes to put into a book.

Abraham has his own apartment in Oakland County and has worked a series of odd jobs, but has not taken any full-time employment.

So, all of this makes his arrest last week a complete and utter non-surprise. The only question is, who is to blame here? Is it Abraham himself, who has made incredibly poor choices even in the face of unparalleled social and economic support? Or the system itself, which treated a troubled boy (who committed a very serious crime, true) as a mature adult and incarcerated him for the bulk of his formative years? Or the news media, whose incessant coverage of his case granted an impressionable youngster instant celebrity status of the worst kind? Most likely the answer is "all of the above" -- not that attributions of blame make this case any less sad.

Teenage Girls, Physical Violence, YouTube, and our Culture

So...I'm sure by now you all have heard the news story and seen the attendant video of the cheerleader in Lakeland, Florida who was lured into a "friend's" home and then severely beaten by that friend and other cheerleaders. All of this for basically talking smack over MySpace (cyberbullying?) about those friends. So what we have is a vivid depiction of six girls who carefully coordinated (with two male lookouts and everything) a vicious attack (to where she suffered a concussion and fell unconscious) on an unsuspecting girl at a home where no parents were around...and where she was detained with no freedom to leave...and where the violence was recorded for the purposes of uploading it to YouTube and MySpace.... Then she was taken in a car, dropped off at some random location, and threatened with more beatings if she went to the authorities.
Points to consider:
1. What is the deal with these girls being so horrifically violent? Is this not out of the ordinary, but seems so because the recording has so starkly shown us the hostility and aggression of which some girls are capable? Is it possible that girls are actually *just as prone to violence* as boys (not withstanding testosterone and so forth) but have been constrained by social acceptability...but perhaps those standards are eroding or fading or being diluted as the years go by?
2. Is our culture being desensitized to female violence? For example, you turn on The Real World on MTV and we are seeing more frequently verbal violence and even physical violence among girls.
3. Were the girls playing to the camera...performing, if you will? Were they, to some degree, looking for their 15 minutes of fame by recording themselves in this video?
4. What were the girls thinking, in terms of escaping identification, apprehension, and punishment, with the recording of the criminal assault?
5. Are the parents at fault?
6. Has anyone seen the MySpace postings, as I'd like to consider their contents?
7. Has anyone figured out how to download flash video, because I'd like to archive those videos linked from that site to show others?

Article and unedited video here.

Race and Juvenile Justice Processing

I'm not sure why, but lately I have been inundated with papers to review on this topic. I understand why I'm getting them (they all cite me. Yay!), but it just seems like there's increased interest all of a sudden in examining how race conditions the effects of other variables on processing. Any thoughts on why that is?

Also, if you're interested in this topic, check out Nancy Rodriquez's latest piece in JQ.