Children Being Punished as Adults is a Crime

Dietrick Mitchell is serving life in prison without possibility for parole. In that fact he is like many people in the American judicial system, what makes Dietrick different is that he is almost 31 years old and he has been in prison since he was 16. Dietrick killed another teen while fleeing from law enforcement while driving drunk. He was tried as an adult, and sentenced to life without parole on a first degree murder charge. This is appalling. (see Dietrick's story and more at http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnesty-magazine/spring-2006/discarded-lives-children-sentenced-to-life-without-parole/page.do?id=1105357)

De Tocqueville wrote that you could tell a great deal about a nation by the way it treats prisoners. This is certainly true, and if the swelling ranks of juveniles are sentenced to life for a variety of crimes, many of which do not involve murder, is any test America is a barbaric and backward nation.

In the late 1800's America became the first nation to create special juvenile courts that recognized the fact that large numbers of American youth were being raised without the benefit of any acceptable level of parental guidance, and therefore needed a chance to be rehabilitated before being sent into the criminal justice system.

I have worked with "at-risk" youth for the last sixteen years and in that time I have worked with youth who have committed some very serious crimes. All my years of experience have shown that if Dietrick Mitchell had been a white kid from an affluent neighborhood he would have gotten a few months in juvenile detention and several years probation at worst.

There is no doubt that race and economic standing plays an enormous role in the sentencing of youthful offenders, with poor minorities being sentenced more severely than middle class whites for the same offenses. If you don't believe me, do a Google search for mandatory minimum sentencing and look at the differences in sentencing for African Americans caught with small amounts of crack cocaine versus the sentences for whites caught with similar amounts of powder cocaine.

The program where I currently teach is full of young African American and Hispanic males who are "doing time" for crimes that middle class white kids would likely not even get probation. These glaring distinctions in our criminal justice system are the modern day version of Jim Crow. I am reminded daily that the kids I work with cannot be "rehabilitated" since they have not been even minimally "habilitated" in the first place.

It's time for Americans to reject politicians who want to be "tough on crime" and start focusing on finding real solutions to the economic, social and educational circumstances that are dragging our country into the morally repugnant position of being one of the world's worst violators of human rights.