This article was published in the Spring 2011 Southerner News Magazine.

It’s no secret that our justice system has many flaws. One of the flaws that scares me the most is our system’s treatment of children.
According to Act 4 Juvenile Justice, as many as 200,000 children are tried as adults in the U.S. every year. In some states, these children can be as young as 10 years old.  For a country who often claims that children are our future and the most precious part of society, its hard to believe that we would be okay with hauling the troubled ones off to be locked up and most likely sexually abused for the rest of their lives.  But that’s exactly what we do.
The thing is, children are not adults. Their brains are not fully developed, and they lack the same capacity that adults have to understand what murder really is. Ask any parent of a 12 year old child and they will tell you that their child cannot take on an adult’s responsibility. Think back when you were 12. That’s sixth grade. I can pretty much guarantee you made some dumb decisions. Granted, these decisions hopefully didn’t involve murder, but the idea is the same.
When a child kills, they have been failed by their schools, their parents, and their country.
Numerous studies have shown that a child’s ability to tell right from wrong is not fully developed until at least 15 years of age. Teenagers are going through a massive growth period, and until they reach adulthood, they are still figuring out such things as weighing consequences and delaying gratification. By charging a child as an adult, a courtroom is showing off its ignorance.
The MacArthur Research Network found that young teenagers do not possess the skills and knowledge it takes to talk to their lawyers and develop a trial strategy, so not only are we forcing children to take on the responsibility of an adult, we are leaving them without the privilege of a fair trial.
    When we are on the subject of fairness, we should talk about race. It’s common knowledge that African Americans and Latinos are far more likely to be arrested and charged for a crime than any white person who has committed the same crime. Racism and prejudices rule our justice system, and children are no exception. Black children are far more likely to be charged as adults than white children who have committed similar crimes, according to TIME Magazine. If a child is going to be tried as an adult, it should at least be because of his crime, not because of his race. A system where racism has the power to change people’s lives has no right to determine the fate of a child.
    And when the child is sent to an adult penitentiary, there fate often, if not always, involves sexual abuse. Children held in adult facilities are five times as likely to be sexually assaulted, and eight times as likely to commit suicide than children held in juvenile facilities according to The International Child and Youth Care Network.
    It’s hard to believe we let this happen. Children are forced to take responsibility they don’t deserve and they cannot handle. Until something changes, children will continue to be exploited at the hands of our justice system. It is completely unreasonable pretend a 10 year old, a 12 year old, or even a 15 year old is just a small adult. Heck I’m 17 but am in no way ready to enter the adult world. We cannot and should not force kids to grow up, no matter what their crime.