A 17-year old girl was thrown in jail after stealing her neighbor's bike. Is this too harsh? In
Al's Morning Meeting, Poynter's Al Tompkins quotes
a WireTap story about juveniles being tried as adults. Consider localizing this story by talking to students on the teen court in your school or in your community.
Tompkins quotes the story:
Every day roughly 7,500 youth are incarcerated in adult
prison, sometimes for the most minor of offenses. Take, for example,
the Wisconsin case of one
17-year-old girl [PDF] sentenced to over two months in adult jail for stealing a neighbor's bicycle. Or the Florida case of a
17-year-old boy [PDF], likewise incarcerated in an adult facility after stealing a classmate's gym clothes...
...Across the nation, states are reconsidering and revising the
harsh laws that continue to leave thousands of youth behind bars. In
2006, Colorado eliminated the state's juvenile life-without-parole
sentence.
The New York Times reported that last year Connecticut, which previously tried all 17-year-olds as adults,
revised its law upward
to age 18. Similar moves are being explored in California, Michigan and
Illinois, among other states. Advocates are additionally pushing for
tighter federal protections of youth in the federal
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, currently up for renewal in Congress.
Tompkins offers this advice:
It would be worthwhile to actually see how many children are locked up
in your local jails and prisons right now. What are their crimes? How
do jails try to separate juveniles from adults?
