Lawmakers in California have introduced a series of criminal reform bills in the hopes of keeping more juveniles out of prison. The proposed measure would require minors to speak with attorneys before waiving their rights during interrogation, and eliminate incarceration of children under 12 years old. In addition to that, though, the bills would ban life sentences without parole for anyone under 18. Mike Papantonio discusses this with Mollye Barrows, legal journalist with The Trial Lawyer Magazine.
Transcript:
Papantonio:
Lawmakers in California have introduced a series of criminal reform bills in the hopes of keeping more juveniles out of prison. The proposed measure would require minors to speak with attorneys before waiving their rights during interrogation, and eliminate incarceration of children under 12 years old. In addition to that, though, the bills would ban life sentences without parole for anyone under 18. Here to talk about this bill, about the fight to reform juvenile justice, is Mollye Barrows, legal journalist with ‘The Trial Lawyer Magazine.’ Mollye, how is this going to change or reduce juvenile incarceration? I guess that’s the goal, isn’t it?
Barrows:
That’s exactly the goal. It’s about saving money. Perhaps giving kids that do have the chance to reform, giving them that chance to reform. Right now, the power lies with prosecutors in the state of California to decide if a juvenile needs to be tried as an adult. What they have found statistically, say 10,000 kids arrested in California since the early 2000s. A good number of those kids, almost a majority of them, were sentenced as adults, were tried as adults, if you will.
The court is saying, “Hey, we need to take another look at this. The Governor of California is saying we need to take another look at this. We have too many kids that are ending up in adult prisons. They’re becoming worse than they were to begin with.” You and I were talking before the camera started to roll, and you bring up a good point: what if the child does need to be tried as an adult?
Papantonio:
Well, here’s what bothers me about this. If this gets too close to sentencing guideline kind of argument. You can’t put a child in prison if they’re under 18 for no matter what the crime is, for life.
What if you’ve got some sociopath or psychopath kid that kills a family of four, and you have this guideline that says, “Well, you can’t put them in there for life.” This is very scary, to me, when you say we’re going to have these absolutes. It’s fine if it’s simply a judge’s guideline. Is this a judge’s guideline, or how do you interpret this?
Barrows:
I think right now they’re in the beginning stages of trying to see what’s going to stick, what’s going to work, and what’s not. That is one of the fundamentals that they would like to see is that the court, the judges have some say in whether or not these children are going to be tried as adults; or if they’re going to be sent to juvenile detention facilities where they can be treated in a more age-appropriate way. Perhaps a group home, perhaps another method that’s going to address the root causes of their behavior, that could effectively keep them out of adult prison, maybe set them on a path where they’re going to live a better life and become a more productive citizen.
Papantonio:
Yeah.
Barrows:
Of course the downside is if you’re dealing with a sociopath, you need somebody in there that’s going to be able to fairly evaluate that and take them off the streets if that’s where they need to be.
Papantonio:
[crosstalk 00:02:32] You know what’s ‘Clockwork Orange’ when you say, “Is there something you need to do with these? Is there some regulation that says I can’t throw this kid in prison for the rest of his life, no matter what he does.” That is very scary stuff to me.
Barrows:
Yeah.
Papantonio:
It sounds to me like this is really more of a suggestion to the judge. I hope that’s what it is. I hope it’s not really like we have federal sentencing guidelines that are absolutely a disaster.
Barrows:
Right.
Papantonio:
The interesting thing is you’ve had a drop of 40% of juvenile incarceration between 2001 and 2011. It’s been a drop. Why is this so important in California right now?
Barrows:
If you look at the racial breakdown of the kids that are still being arrested and whether or not they’re charged as adults, the ones that are still being arrested and tried, and moving through the court system, are minorities. They’re children of color. Once again, this is not just California but at states across the country.
They’re taking a look and saying, “How many kids are we arresting? How many of them are proportionately white background? How many of them are of Mexican or African American backgrounds?”
What they’re finding is that disproportionately minority children are being arrested and that goes against a lot of studies that say “Hey, kids behave the same when they’re behaving well and when they’re behaving badly. What are our existing prejudices, our biases within the court system that’s leading to this?” I think it’s a way of addressing a number of social issues.
Papantonio:
Okay.
Barrows:
Weeding out the kids that could actually be helped from those, that like you said, need to be.
