Mistreatment of Youth: Criminalization U.S.- Style

by Bronwyn Lepore
    
In February (2009) two Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania judges, Mark A. Ciaravella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, were convicted of receiving kickbacks to the tune of 2.6 million dollars from the privately run juvenile detention centers ironically named PA Child Care LLC and Western PA Child Care LLC, for sentencing over 5, 000 kids (who typically lacked legal representation) to jail since 2003, for infractions as minor as stealing loose change from cars, writing prank notes and possessing drug paraphernalia. Corporate prison officials have yet to be charged. The news was shocking, but to those familiar with the U.S. prison industry, hardly surprising. The tracking of black, Latino1 and poor white kids into the prison system has been gaining momentum in the U.S. for some time.²

Henry A. Giroux‘s recent essay “Disposable Youth in a Suspect Society: A challenge for the Obama administration”3 describes how “the popular demonization of the young now justifies responses to youth that were unthinkable 20 years ago, including criminalization and imprisonment, the prescription of psychotropic drugs [a new children's mental “disorder” is identified as “Failure to Obey”], psychiatric confinement, and zero tolerance policies that model schools after prisons. School has become a model for a punishing society in which children who violate a rule as minor as a dress code infraction or act out slightly in class can be handcuffed, booked and put in a jail cell.” One of Project Censored’s top 25 censored stories of 2008 “Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers,” highlighted an underreported 2007 AP study investigating the “number of deaths as well as the allegations and confirmed cases of physical, sexual and emotional abuse by [prison] staff members since January 1, 2004. “ From a total population [2007] of 46,000 youth detention center detainees, an astounding 13,000 claims had been filed.  In January of 2006, according to the report, 14-year old Martin Lee Anderson was beaten to death by guards – who were acquitted of manslaughter charges, the court ruling that “reasonable” force was used - at a Florida Boot Camp. Many juvenile detention centers suffer from severe overcrowding or extreme isolation (over 23-hours a day for months straight), lack of educational opportunity, nonexistent mental healthcare or rehab programs, use of excessive force (restraints, beatings, pepper spray) and inappropriate administration of medications. 

Pennsylvania alone has more (increasingly privatized and thus for profit) juvenile detention centers than all of Canada. Increased incarceration rates, as the Wilkes-Barre corruption shows, go hand in hand with privatization. Judge Conahan helped shut down a county run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped two corporations secure private contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. And, of course, profit depends on numbers locked up, thus the enticement for immoral judges and industry to criminalize more and more kids. According to an article by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, one of the juveniles incarcerated by the PA judges, Hillary Transue, received a 3-month jail term for “posting a web site parodying the assistant principal at her school.” Another female adolescent, Jamie Quinn, was imprisoned for a year at the age of 14 for smacking another girl (the smack did not leave any marks and the other girl smacked her first).  Initially incarcerated at one of the “Child Care” facilities, she was FTO’d (Failure to Obey) after a few weeks and sent to a military-style boot camp called Vision Quest. She was medicated and had to be hospitalized 3 times. In a live interview with Goodman, Quinn described how the experience affected her: she “lost friends, people look at me different” and is “struggling in school.” Two separate class action suits have been filed by Philly’s JLC (Juvenile Law Center).  

Additionally, the U.S. is the only country to allow life sentences for youth.4 An excellent and thorough study by the EJI (Equal Justice Initiative – see www.eji.org) “Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-year-old Children to Die in Prison” concludes that “condemning young children to die in prison is cruel and incompatible with fundamental standards of decency that require protection for children. These sentences undermine the efforts of parents, teachers, lawyers, activists, legislators, policymakers, judges, child advocates, clergy, students, and ordinary citizens to ensure the well-being of young children in our society and they feed the despair and violence that traumatizes too many of our communities and young people.” The report cites numerous case studies of kids such as Ian Manuel (now 29) who was “sentenced to die in prison for a non-homicide that occurred when he was 13… he has spent half his life in a closet-size concrete box, getting his food through a slot in the door.”

Youth advocates such as Giroux and Mike Males, who authored The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents (1996) and Kids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth (2001) (the entire book can be read/downloaded from Males' homepage) highlight how mainstream media plays a supporting role in criminalization by demonizing youth. “In spite of the fact that crime continues to decline in the United States,” writes Giroux, “the popular media still represents young people as violent and threatening.” The triad of corporate media, a corporate prison industry, and a government and politicians willing to sacrifice young people for profit has created a nasty cycle of repression, that only powerful advocacy and social movements can address. Learn more! Get involved!

All of the talk about a post-racial society in light of Obama’s election is meaningless as long as young people of color are disproportionately criminalized at younger and younger ages, allowed to disappear in the growing ranks of the criminal justice system and increasingly viewed as a racial threat to society rather than as a crucial social, political and economic investment. Obama’s message of hope and responsibility seems empty unless he addresses the plight of poor white youth and youth of color and the growing youth industrial complex.

-Giroux, “Locked Out and Locked Up: Youth Missing in Action From Obama’s Stimulus Plan (17 February 2009 truthout)

1. According to a study by the CDF (Children’s Defense Fund) “A black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; A Latino boy has a 1 in 6 chance.”

2. See Christian Parenti’s Lockdown America for a good overview of the rise of today’s PIC (Prison Industrial Complex.

3. Giroux, a long-time youth advocate is professor of English and Cultural Studies, and author of numerous books, including The Abandoned Generation: Democracy beyond the culture of fear (2003) and the upcoming Youth in a Scapegoat Society: Democracy or Disposability (2009).

4. See Rob X Holbrook’s reflections on his incarceration as a youth in defenestrator issue 39, pg. 8 Reflections Back to a Long Hot Summer.