Crime? Is juvenile justice really justice?
When I was a mixed-up kid trying to find my worth as a boy in the neighborhood, I tried to turn to those I considered to be the cool guys.
I didn’t know much about the guys who hung out on street corners except kids were supposed to stay away from them because they were troublemakers involved in behavior that would bring on the cops.
But I did not care.
Like all young boys, I wanted to be cool. I wanted to walk and talk just like them and be accepted into the circle. But the one time I attempted to join in the conversation, those same guys chased me off with a bunch of curse words, telling me, “Get out of here. you don’t know nothing about this.”
I remember feeling humiliated as I walked away trying to puff up a no-care attitude by putting more cut in my strut — but wondering at the same time what was wrong with me that the cool guys wanted nothing to do with me at all.
It may sound like they did a good thing — and indeed time proved it was — but at the time, for a boy mired in an abusive situation and suddenly pronounced “the man of the house” after my father’s departure, it was a major disappointment that left me fantasizing about what I could do to belong and prove my worth.
I managed to get through those teen years mostly unscathed by the judicial system. But it does have me thinking about the many juveniles who now face judges. I wonder why some of the guys on their corners did not send them packing like I was — and if that is why so many kids are trapped in a criminal cycle.
It is no secret that states across the country are revamping their judicial systems to be more rehabilitative and less punitive. But to me, the proposed revamping of the juvenile judicial system seems to be a hodgepodge of maneuvers designed around a scientific study that says the brain is not developed until a person hits his or her mid-20s.
The revamped system in Connecticut proposes to raise the age at which juveniles are tried as adults to 21 by allowing 18-, 19-, and 20-yearolds to have their cases heard within the juvenile justice system as opposed to adult court.
This designation also would mean their cases would be sealed from public view; their names kept out of the news media; be subjected to no more than four years of imprisonment and have their records erased four years after their convictions as long as they complete their sentences.
It is hard to argue with that kind of common-sense legislation when we see so many of our confused youth behind bars. And regardless of their reckless actions, they are still kids.
But I have always been a little queasy about this proposed new law because at age 16 and 17, I knew right from wrong and knew there would be consequences for my actions.
But then again, I remember when I so desperately wanted to be cool and hang with those guys, to belong, and the consequences of what could happen was not part of my thinking.
Juveniles on the wrong side of the law is a massive problem. We are not only dealing with juveniles but, in many cases, the juvenile parental minds that raised them. A child can’t help where he or she comes from, and it is hard to break patterns of taught or ignored behavior.
According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, teens can be smart as a whip, but good judgment is not something they display because the rational side of the brain does not develop until at least age 25 — and it gives a clear explanation behind the science: “Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of longterm consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part.
“In teen’s brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing — and not always at the same rate. That’s why when teens have overwhelming emotional input, they can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling.”
I am not sure why I never got involved in the criminal system as a youth; I certainly had all the makeup: I was poor and angry at the world, hungry most of the time, I didn’t have a sense I belonged anywhere and I didn’t think anyone cared.
Doesn’t that sound like a lot of the kids in the judicial system? I doubt if many of these kids feel they ever have had justice because justice is about being fair and equal. And for many of them, there has been nothing fair or equal about their lives.
That is not on us. There is only so much society can do to combat the circumstances these kids are born into or the lures that lead them astray.
But there are things we can do.
The judicial branch is seeking secure, communitybased facilities to house teens leaving juvenile detention who once resided at the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown, which has been closed. The project is stalled as the state seeks contractors.
Connecticut must beef up its efforts to make this happen, because these type of facilities are needed. These young offenders need a real chance to get out from under the cold fluorescent lights of the criminal system.
Maybe they, too, simply wanted to belong but could not fight the voices sending them down the wrong path.
Because when you are a troubled youth, those voices are hard to ignore — and so are the consequences.
Crime? Is juvenile justice really justice?