Far From the Tree

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Far From the Tree Page 130

by Solomon, Andrew


  1345 This passage is based on my interview with Alphonsine Mukamakuza in 2004.

  1346 The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted July 17, 1998, and entered into force on July 1, 2002. For the full text, see United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2187, p. 3, http://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&lang=en; see also the website of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/index.html.

  1347 See International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, The prosecutor versus Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgment 688, September 2, 1998; a summary of the judgment can be found at http://www.uniurb.it/scipol/pretelli/9%20Akayesu.pdf.

  1348 A 2004 report by the Iraq Ministry of Women’s Affairs found that more than half of the four hundred rapes reported since the US invasion resulted in the murder of rape survivors by their families; see Yifat Susskind, “The murder of Du’a Aswad,” Madre, May 22, 2007.

  1349 The quotation from Susan Harris Rimmer occurs on page 324 of her paper “‘Orphans’ or veterans?: Justice for children born of war in East Timor,” Texas International Law Journal 42, no. 2 (Spring 2007). In full: “I aim to shift the current approach to children born of war in Timor from covert welfare assistance by the Catholic Church and NGOs, to a rights-based framework, in which the affected children would be publicly accepted as having valid claims before the Government, rather than seen as by-products of a crime or sin.”

  1350 The quotation from Jeanne Muliri Kabekatyo (“We want to make out of these children artisans of peace”) comes from Danielle Shapiro, “Mothers in Congo get help in raising children of rape,” Christian Science Monitor, May 9, 2010.

  1351 This passage is based on my interview with Christine Uwamahoro in 2004.

  X: Crime

  1352 Popular overestimation of the deterrent effects of incarceration is discussed in Peter W. Greenwood et al., Diverting Children from a Life of Crime: Measuring Costs and Benefits (1996).

  1353 The quotation from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids (“Those on the front lines . . .”) occurs on page 2 of the organization’s position statement “Investments in children prevent crime and save money” (2003), http://www.fightcrime.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/reports/Cost-Bft%20Br%20FINAL%204-30-03.pdf.

  1354 For the meta-analysis of studies on the correlation between rehabilitation programs and recidivism, see Mark W. Lipsey and David B. Wilson, “Effective interventions for serious juvenile offenders: A synthesis of research,” on pages 313–66 of Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions, edited by Rolf Loeber and David P. Farrington (1998).

  1355 The quotation from the NIH on the futility of scare tactics to reduce youth crime occurs on page 7 of the report Preventing Violence and Related Health-Risking Social Behaviors in Adolescents (2004).

  1356 Joseph A. Califano’s reference to “colleges of criminality” occurs on page 20 of the Columbia University National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse report Criminal Neglect: Substance Abuse, Juvenile Justice and the Children Left Behind (2004).

  1357 Statistics on rates of rearrest of juveniles after release from prison occur on page 7 of Patrick A. Langan and David J. Levin’s report to the Department of Justice, “Recidivism of prisoners released in 1994” (2002).

  1358 Crime victims’ survivors’ lack of postexecution satisfaction is explored in Scott Vollum and Dennis R. Longmire, “Covictims of capital murder: Statements of victims’ family members and friends made at the time of execution,” Violence & Victims 22, no. 5 (October 2007); and Thomas J. Mowen and Ryan D. Schroeder, “Not in my name: An investigation of victims’ family clemency movements and court appointed closure,” Western Criminology Review 12, no. 1 (January 2011).

  1359 This passage is based on my interviews with Cora Nelson, Peter Makya, Jennifer Stiles, Sarah Stiles, Ethan Heinz, and Marcella Stiles between 2003 and 2006 and subsequent communications. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1360 Adolescent weapon-carrying was assessed in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, with findings published in multiple reports; see, e.g., Robert W. Blum et al., “The effects of race/ethnicity, income, and family structure on adolescent risk behaviors,” American Journal of Public Health 90, no. 12 (December 2000); and John Hagan and Holly Foster, “Youth violence and the end of adolescence,” American Sociological Review 66 (December 2001). For a journalistic discussion of the study, see Laura Sessions’s article “New study questions teen risk factors,” Washington Post, November 30, 2000.

  1361 See Robert Agnew and Sandra Huguley, “Adolescent violence toward parents,” Journal of Marriage & the Family 51, no. 3 (August 1989); and Charles W. Peek, Judith L. Fischer, and Jeannie S. Kidwell, “Teenage violence toward parents: A neglected dimension of family violence,” Journal of Marriage & the Family 47 (1985).

  1362 Statistics on juvenile arrest rates occur on page 5 of Dean John Champion, The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law (2004).

  1363 Relative chances of apprehension of juvenile and adult suspects are discussed in Monique M. Matherne and Adrian Thomas, “Family environment as a predictor of adolescent delinquency,” Adolescence 36, no. 144 (Winter 2001).

  1364 Jennifer L. Truman, Criminal Victimization, 2010, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report NCJ 235508 (2011). See also statistics on referrals to court, incarceration, and probation on pages 29–57 of Charles Puzzanchera and Melissa Sickmund’s report to the US Department of Justice, Juvenile Court Statistics 2005 (2008); see also Charles Puzzanchera, Juvenile Arrests 2007 (2009).

  1365 The characterization of juvenile detention centers as “an extension of the principal’s office” occurs in Sara Rimer, “Unruly students facing arrest, not detention,” New York Times, January 4, 2004.

  1366 Statistics on the decline in juvenile murder arrests occur on page 1 of Charles Puzzanchera, Juvenile Arrests 2007 (2009).

  1367 Waivers are discussed in chapter 9 (pages 297–342) of Dean John Champion , The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law (2004).

  1368 For information on the expansion of the waiver system, see Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report (2006), pages 113–14 (“Traditionally, discretionary judicial waiver was the most common transfer mechanism. Beginning in the 1970s, however, state legislatures have changed laws to move juvenile offenders into criminal court based on age and/or offense seriousness without the case-specific consideration offered by the discretionary juvenile court judicial waiver process. State transfer provisions changed extensively in the 1990s. Since 1992, all states but Nebraska have changed their transfer statutes to make it easier for juveniles to be tried in criminal court. But the pace of such changes has slowed considerably. From 1992 through 1995, 40 states and the District of Columbia enacted or expanded transfer provisions. From 1998 through 2002, legislatures in 18 states enacted or expanded their transfer provisions. From 2003 through 2004, only 4 states made substantive changes in transfer provisions, and only 2 of those states expanded them.”); see also Melissa Sickmund, “Juveniles in court,” National Report Series Bulletin (June 2003), https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/195420/page4.html, page 4 (chart details statutes at the end of the 1999 legislative session: 46 states provided for discretionary judicial waiver; excerpt: “Nearly all states have expanded their transfer provisions recently. Traditionally, discretionary judicial waiver was the transfer mechanism on which most states relied. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the present, however, state legislatures have increasingly moved juvenile offenders into criminal court based on age and/or offense seriousness, without the case-specific consideration offered by the discretionary juvenile court judicial waiver process.

  “State transfer provisions changed extensively in the 1990s. From 1992 through 1999, 49 states and the District of Columbia enacted or expanded their transfer provisions. Nebraska was the only exception. An increas
ing number of state legislatures have enacted mandatory waiver or exclusion statutes. Less common, then and now, are concurrent jurisdiction provisions.”).

  1369 The US Supreme Court decision outlawing the death penalty in juvenile cases occurred in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, decided March 1, 2005, available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/04pdf/03-633.pdf. For a press report on the case, see David Stout, “Supreme Court bars death penalty for juvenile killers,” New York Times, March 1, 2005. Statistics on the percentage of juveniles on death row prior to Roper v. Simmons come from page 187 of Dean John Champion, The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law (2004).

  1370 Authoritative modern sources on the history of juvenile crime and juvenile justice in the United States include Dean John Champion, The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law (2004); and Clemens Bartollas, Voices of Delinquency (2003). For a nineteenth-century perspective, see Bradford Kinney Pierce , A Half Century with Juvenile Delinquents: The New York House of Refuge and Its Times (1869).

  The tragic story of Thomas Granger was told by William Bradford, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in his diary, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison (1957), 1371–21: “And after the time of the writing these things befell a very sad accident of the like foul nature in this government, this very year, which I shall now relate. There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger. He was servant to an honest man of Duxbury, being about 16 or 17 years of age. (His father and mother lived at the same time at Scietuate.) He was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was the first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution.

  “And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.

  “Upon the examination of this person and also of a former that had made some sodomitical attempts upon another, it being demanded of them how they came first to the knowledge and practice of such wickedness, the one confessed he had long used it in old England; and this youth last spoken of said he was taught it by another that had heard of such things from some in England when he was there, and they kept cattle together. By which it appears how one wicked person may infect many, and what care all ought to have what servants they bring into their families.”

  1372 The quotation from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism (“Here is one great school of vice and desperation . . .”) occurs on pages 37–39 of Bradford Kinney Pierce, A Half Century with Juvenile Delinquents: The New York House of Refuge and Its Time (1869); the phrase simple labor appears on page 62; a discussion of the organization’s proposals can be found on pages 62–74.

  1373 The quotation from Chicago judge Julian Mack (“The problem for determination by the judge . . .”) occurs on pages 119–20 of his article “The juvenile court,” Harvard Law Review 23 (1909). The passage in full: “The problem for determination by the judge is not, Has this boy or girl committed a specific wrong, but What is he, how has he become what he is, and what had best be done in his interest and in the interest of the state to save him from a downward career. It is apparent at once that the ordinary legal evidence in a criminal court is not the sort of evidence to be heard in such a proceeding. A thorough investigation, usually made by the probation officer, will give the court much information bearing on the heredity and environment of the child. This, of course, will be supplemented in every possible way; but this alone is not enough. The physical and mental condition of the child must be known, for the relation between physical defects and criminality is very close. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that there be attached to the court, as has been done in a few cities, a child study department, where every child, before hearing, shall be subjected to a thorough psycho-physical examination. In hundreds of cases the discovery and remedy of defective eyesight or hearing or some slight surgical operation will effectuate a complete change in the character of the lad.”

  1374 The quotation from Judge Benjamin Lindsey (“Our laws against crime are as inapplicable to children as they would be to idiots”) occurs on page 133 of Ben Lindsey and Harvey O’Higgins, The Beast (1970), as cited in Rachel Aviv, “No remorse: Should a teenager be given a life sentence?,” New Yorker, January 2, 2012.

  1375 The full text of the Supreme Court decision In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, decided May 15, 1967, can be found on the Cornell University Legal Information Institute website, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0387_0001_ZS.html. The reference to “Kangaroo Court” occurs on pages 27–28 of the decision: “[I]t would be extraordinary if our Constitution did not require the procedural regularity and the exercise of care implied in the phrase ‘due process.’ Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court.”

  1376 The full text of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act can be found on the US Department of Justice website, http://www.ojjdp.gov/about/ojjjjact.txt. For a discussion of the provisions of the act, see pages 36–39 of Dean John Champion, The Juvenile Justice System: Delinquency, Processing, and the Law (2004).

  1377 The US Department of Justice official’s lament about the “psychobabble of social workers” comes from Merrill Hartson, “Juvenile court system too soft on criminals, U.S. official says,” Associated Press, September 4, 1985.

  1378 The paucity of treatment programs for court-involved youth is discussed on page 7 of the Columbia University National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse report Criminal Neglect: Substance Abuse, Juvenile Justice and the Children Left Behind (2004).

  1379 See, for example, Rosemary Sarri and Jeffrey Shook, “Human rights and juvenile justice in the United States,” in Children’s Human Rights: Progress and Challenges for Children Worldwide, edited by Mark Ensalaco and Linda C. Majka (2005).

  1380 For a discussion of the study finding that only a third of adolescent defendants thought their attorneys were helpful, see page 126 of Thomas Grisso and Robert G. Schwartz, Youth on Trial: A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice (2000); juvenile defendants’ understanding of the Miranda warning is discussed on page 114.

  1381 The quotation from Thomas Grisso and Robert G. Schwartz (“The adult-like procedures introduced by the left . . .”) occurs on page 31 of their book Youth on Trial: A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice (2000).

  1382 For more information on brain development and delinquent behavior, see Daniel R. Weinberger, “A brain too young for good judgment,” New York Times, March 10, 2001; and Laurence Steinberg and Elizabeth Cauffman, “Maturity of judgment in adolescence: Psychosocial factors in adolescent decision making,” Law & Human Behavior 20, no. 3 (June 1996). Weinberger is director of the Clinical Brain Disorders Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health.

  1383 Statistics on the association of drug and alcohol intoxication and the commission of crimes come from page 11 of the Columbia University National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
report Criminal Neglect: Substance Abuse, Juvenile Justice and the Children Left Behind (2004); rates of drug and alcohol abuse among adolescent criminal defendants from page 2; rates of substance-abuse treatment from page 56. For more detail on the level of substance-abuse treatment in correctional facilities, see the HHS report Drug and Alcohol Treatment in Juvenile Correctional Facilities: The DASIS Report (2002).

  1384 This passage is based on my interview with Sophia and Josiah McFeely in 2004 and subsequent communications. All names in this passage are pseudonyms.

  1385 Numbers of adolescent defendants with psychiatric diagnoses come from Linda A. Teplin et al., “Psychiatric disorders in youth in juvenile detention,” Archives of General Psychiatry 59, no. 12 (2002); and page 35 of the Columbia University National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse report Criminal Neglect: Substance Abuse, Juvenile Justice and the Children Left Behind (2004).

  1386 The proportion of incarcerated adolescents with learning disabilities comes from page 5 of Ronald D. Stephens and June Lane Arnette, “From the courthouse to the schoolhouse: Making successful transitions,” OJJDP: Juvenile Justice Bulletin NCJ-178900 (2000).

  1387 For the study of “easy” and “difficult” babies and later court involvement, see Rolf Loeber and Dale F. Hay, “Developmental approaches to aggression and conduct problems,” on pages 488–515 of Development through Life: A Handbook for Clinicians, edited by Michael Rutter and Dale F. Hay (1994).

  1388 For the study on the relationship between youthful “troublesomeness” and adolescent offending, see David P. Farrington, “The development of offending and antisocial behaviour from childhood: Key findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development,” Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry 36, no. 6 (September 1995).

  1389 An increased risk for offending for those who start young is found in Richard Dembo et al., “Predictors of recidivism to a juvenile assessment center: A three year study,” Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse 7, no. 3 (1998); see also Patrick Tolan and Peter Thomas, “The implications of age of onset for delinquency risk II: Longitudinal data,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 23, no. 2 (April 1995): 157–81.

 

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