ABC Good Morning America: Justice for Juveniles

KEVIN NEWMAN, Host: Well, after getting over the initial shock of the Jonesboro school shootings, the focus is shifting now to the 11- and 13-year-old suspects and what’ll happen to them if they’re convicted. Well, if tried as juveniles, under Arkansas law, the boys will most likely be imprisoned only until they’re 18 years old, a fact which has some calling for them to be tried as adults.

But is that really the answer for them, or are other children — or for other children, for that matter, charged with violent crimes? ABC’s Antonio Mora looks at the debate.

ANTONIO MORA, ABC News: (voice-over) Nathaniel is 11 years old and 65 pounds. He’s also accused of being a cold- blooded killer after allegedly waiting outside a store and fatally shooting a random victim. Earlier this year, the state of Michigan decided Nathaniel should be tried as an adult, meaning he faced the risk of spending the rest of his life behind bars.

DAVID GORSICA, Pontiac, Michigan, Prosecutor: I believe Nathaniel knows the nature of his consequences, and he knows the difference between right and wrong.

DANIEL BAGDADE, Nathaniel’s Attorney: Nate is 11 years old. Eleven-year-olds in our society don’t understand the consequences of their action.

ANTONIO MORA: (voice-over) Over the last 10 years, the rate at which young offenders have ended up in the adult criminal system, as opposed to the juvenile justice system, has gone up 70 percent.

DELORES JONES-BROWN, John Jay College: Many jurisdictions either lowered the age at which they allowed juveniles to be treated as adults, or instituted statutes that would allow juveniles to be treated as adults.

ANTONIO MORA: (voice-over) In Indiana, South Dakota, and Vermont, children as young as 10 may be treated as adults. Like Michigan, these states have decided to take the hard line.

Gov. JOHN ENGLER (R), Michigan: These are young, dangerous punks who have been committing very serious crimes, who have been inflicting bodily harm on their neighbor. They’re not going to be back in society until they’re older, and hopefully they will be somewhat wiser.

ANTONIO MORA: (voice-over) But in 17 other states, including Arkansas, offenders under the age of 14 stay in the juvenile justice system, with the hope they might be rehabilitated.

HENRY MILLER, Attorney: What are you going to do, put kids in adult jail, where they’ll be subject to all kinds of abuse? Are we going to subject them to capital punishment? Not likely.

ANTONIO MORA: (voice-over) It may not solve the problem, but increasingly, kids who kill will have to pay just like grownups.

Antonio Mora for Good Morning America.

KEVIN NEWMAN: And joining us now from Los Angeles to discuss how the criminal justice system can best handle young offenders is Edward Humes. He is the author of No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court. Mr. Humes, good morning to you.

EDWARD HUMES: Good morning.

KEVIN NEWMAN: So after studying the courts and being in the courts for a year, what kinds of things did you see? How extensive was your access?

EDWARD HUMES: Well, my access was extensive. I not only spent a year in the closed and confidential arena of juvenile court, but I also worked as a volunteer teacher in juvenile hall, teaching a writing class to some of the high- risk offenders there.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Now, you ...

EDWARD HUMES: So I got a close-up look.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Now, you know what’s going on in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the kind of feelings that have -- a lot of the people there feel. We had Mitchell Wright, the husband of the teacher who was slain, on this morning, and he was quite emphatic in saying that he believed that the two young boys should be charged and tried in adult court. From your experience, is he right?

EDWARD HUMES: Well, it’s certainly a natural reaction to this unbelievable tragedy. The first thing that people think is, you know, We need to protect ourselves from dangerous children. I think that’s perfectly natural.

The problem is that a case like this is so aberrant as to be almost useless in trying to assess what’s going on with juvenile crime. Our juvenile justice system is not lenient in America, it’s the toughest in the world, perhaps next to Iran.

We have over 50 juvenile offenders on death row around the country now. We’re sending over 20,000 kids a year into adult court and into adult prisons. That’s for every 50 kids who walk into juvenile court, we’re sending at least one into the adult system.

That’s unprecedented. So we’re not going easy on these kids.

KEVIN NEWMAN: But I guess of all the juveniles that you met in your year of watching it, is it your impression that kids that are 11 and kids that are 13 know what they’re doing when they premeditate murder?

EDWARD HUMES: No, I mean, look at the pictures of these kids, that they’re clearly children. And they’re not the same as adults. Even when they do monstrous things, children are still children. And whether we put these kids in an adult prison or in a juvenile facility, they’ re still going to get out someday, and they’re still going to be somebody’ s neighbor.

And if they’re my neighbor, I would like to know that the government, that the state, that the penal system has made some effort to rehabilitate them, and not just to warehouse them.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Well, and that’s the point of the juvenile system is rehabilitation. But I guess when the people of Arkansas think of this, and they think, "Well, these boys or any child will be out by the age of 18," is that long enough to rehabilitate a child?

EDWARD HUMES: It’s a dangerously short time, but the way to fix it is not necessarily to transfer kids to adult court. California looked at this problem almost 20 years ago, and what they did was create a juvenile system that keeps them until age 25. So that you get - - if you’re an 11-year-old and you commit a murder in California, you can be incarcerated for 14 years in a juvenile facility, which is more than most adult murderers end up serving in prison.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Well, it’s also true, I think, some 20 states have no limit on when kids can be tried as adults or juveniles. From your experience, what is the relationship between the age of the child and how they understand the consequences of their action? I mean, is 13, 14, or does it depend on the child himself or herself?

EDWARD HUMES: There’s no set rule. Whenever you come up with a chronological line, you know, at a certain age we’re going to call a kid an adult, there’s always going to be kids who fall on the wrong side of that line, someone who deserves mercy who can’t get it, and someone who really needs to be locked away who won’t be.

The problem is that in almost every other part of society, we acknowledge that 11- and 14-year-olds are not adults. Just because you can open a bottle of beer doesn’t mean that you should be drinking that beer. But a 14-year- old, of course, can do that.

We want to deter them from that the same way we want to deter young children from having sex or from driving a car, of doing a lot of other activities. If they’re not considered adults in those venues, I don’t know how you can say, just because a child picks up a gun and uses it, they’re suddenly adults. It doesn’t work that way.

KEVIN NEWMAN: All right, Mr. Humes, thank you very much for helping us with this this morning. We appreciate it.

EDWARD HUMES: My pleasure.

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