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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

There Are No Children Here
by nancy a heitzeg

“Racially differential treatment of children is an important yet under-explored arena within social psychology. The present findings suggest how urgently field and laboratory work are needed to fill in this research gap. In addition, they suggest that if, as Alice Walker says, “The most important question in the world is, “Why is the child crying’?” then, for Black children, the most important answer may be that they cry because they are not allowed to be children at all.

~ Goff, P. A., Jackson, M. C., Di Leone, B. A. L., Culotta, C. M., & DiTomasso, N. A. (2014, February 24). The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The title of this piece is of course stolen from Alex Kotolowitz whose 1987 book (and then Oprah TV movie) chronicled the lives of two boys growing up in the Henry Horner Homes.  The title is meant to convey how concentrated poverty and its’ attendant social ills deprive children of the joy of innocence and the opportunity to be carefree. But as the introductory quote from this recent study reveals, there is another meaning too. Racism, particularly anti-Blackness, and deeply held implicit biases also disfigure “innocence”, denying Black children both humanity and childhood, defining them as miniature “adults” to be feared and then controlled.

This has profound implications for everyday interaction with adult caretakers, teachers, and police. Those who are expected to protect childhood innocence are now inclined to deny it, and these singular reactions by adults in charge serve to replicate and reinforce institutional racism. This denial of innocence shapes the racial contours of the school to prison pipeline , and , as we have seen again this week, underlies decisions to charge and incarcerate juveniles as adults, and then brutalize them once they are in custody.

Because There Are No Children Here.

Juvenile Life without Parole, Two Years After Miller

Two years ago the Supreme Court ruled on the cases of  Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs , striking down statutes in 29 states that provided for mandatory life-without-parole (JLWOP) sentences for children. Following the logic of  5-4 Roper v. Simmons (2005) and Sullivan v. Florida/Graham v. Florida (2010) , JLWOP is a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment the court said, to deny children the opportunity for eventual freedom, even if there youthful crime is murder.

A new report from the Sentencing Project, Slow to Act: State Responses to 20role. 12 Supreme Court Mandate on Life without Parole, finds that a majority of states have done nothing to pursue statutory reform, while others use loopholes to continue sentencing minors to long-term punishments. Overall, a total of 44 states still have the option to sentence people to life in prison for crimes they committed as children, and more than 2500 youth still face life without parole for crimes they committed as children. The majority of these youth are first time offenders, have public defenders and waive their rights while failing to comprehend the Miranda warning.

So little has changed. The U.S. remains the only country in the world that practices JLWOP, and remains, with Somalia, one of two nations in the world which has refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document which expressly forbids this very practice.  It should come as no surprise that the states with the highest rates of JLWOP sentences are the largely White/disproportionate incarcerators of Blacks, Pennsylvania and Michigan, followed closely by Louisiana – Incarceration Capital of the World, Florida (the state noted for the youngest JLWOP sentencing in the Lionel Tate case), and California, the Birthplace of the Contemporary Prison Industrial Complex.

No surprise either that the race class gender disparities in these sentences are even greater than the incredible skew found in the adult system. Black youth are 10 times more likely to be sentenced to JLWOP than their white counter-parts, and every single one of those sentenced under the age of 15 is a child of color.

States remain reluctant to reconsider past JLWOP cases or offer early release under either Graham or Miller. This month, PBS chronicles the case of one Kenneth Young, sentenced in Florida at age 15 to four consecutive life sentences for a string of armed robberies where no one was injured. 15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story can be watched on-line at PBS here.

Conditions of Confinement, Rikers Island

Once youth are confined — be it forever or short term – they are subject to brutal conditions – staff on inmate abuse, sexual assaults, excessive use of force and increasingly, use of  solitary confinement ( see a new report from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, “Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States,”)

In a new report, which is hardly anomalous, the U. S. Department of Justice finds a “deep-seated culture of violence” , a “staggering” number of injuries among youthful inmates (over 44% experience injuries from staff) , and “powerful code of silence” surrounding the treatment of youthful prisoners at NYC’s  Rikers Island.

From the Executive Summary of theCRIPA Investigation of the New York City Department of Correction Jails on Rikers Island“

“We find that the New York City Department of Correction systematically has failed to protect adolescent inmates from harm in violation of the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This harm is the result of the repeated use of excessive and unnecessary force by correction officers against adolescent inmates, as well as high levels of inmate-on-inmate violence.

We have made the following specific factual determinations:

•  force is used against adolescents at an alarming rate and violent inmate-on-inmate
• fights and assaults are commonplace, resulting in a striking number of serious injuries;
•  correction officers resort to “headshots,” or blows to an inmate’s head or facial area,
•  too frequently; force is used as punishment or retribution;
• force is used in response to inmates’ verbal altercations with officers;
• use of force by specialized response teams within the jails is particularly brutal;
• correction officers attempt to justify use of force by yelling “stop resisting” even
• when the adolescent has been completely subdued or was never resisting in the first place; and
• use of force is particularly common in areas without video surveillance cameras.

Furthermore, we identified the following systemic deficiencies that contribute to, exacerbate, and indeed are largely responsible for the excessive and unnecessary use of force by DOC staff. Many of these systemic deficiencies also lead to the high levels of inmate violence.

These deficiencies include:

•  inadequate reporting by staff of the use of force, including false reporting;
•  inadequate investigations into the use of force;
• inadequate staff discipline for inappropriate use of force;
• an inadequate classification system for adolescent inmates;
• an inadequate inmate grievance system;
• inadequate supervision of inmates by staff;
• inadequate training both on use of force and on managing adolescents; and
• general failures by management to adequately address the extraordinarily high levels
• of violence perpetrated against and among the adolescent population.

Finally, DOC’s use of prolonged punitive segregation for adolescent inmates is excessive and inappropriate.’

 Coda

What is there to say that has not been said before? At this late date, no one can claim ignorance of the nature and scope of our nation’s proclivity for brutalizing children, especially if they are Black. It should be clear too that any number of Supreme Court rulings, any number of reports by the U.S. Department of Justice, any number of efforts towards so-called “reforms” are for naught. The heart of darkness in all these punishing endeavors is racism – the notion that some people are “less than” human, some children are never “innocent “, and that cruelty and the cage is the only possible response.

It is that vile premise that must be directly named and confronted, and finally finally finally, rooted out.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel (2008) has suggested that, for middle-class White males, the period of time when boys are not held fully responsible for their actions can extend well into their late 20s. In contrast, the present research suggests that Black children may be viewed as adults as soon as 13, with average age over-estimations of Black children exceeding four and a half years in some cases… In other words, our findings suggest that, although most children are allowed to be innocent until adulthood, Black children may be perceived as innocent only until deemed suspicious.”  

~ Goff, P. A., Jackson, M. C., Di Leone, B. A. L., Culotta, C. M., & DiTomasso, N. A. (2014, February 24). The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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