News

For Immediate Release:  January 29, 2009

Contact: Allison Conyers,  757-870-8749 or [email protected]

Note:  A hearing will be held Friday, January 29 to determine whether Jordan Brown–accused of killing his father’s girlfriend at age 11–will  be tried as an adult.  If tried as an adult and found guilty Jordan Brown will be the youngest person in the world sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Statement by Jody Kent, Director and National Coordinator of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth

“The murder of Kenzie Marie Houk was tragic, and the person who is responsible for it should be held accountable and punished in an age appropriate way.

If the currently accused Jordan Brown is tried and convicted in adult court, he will receive a mandatory life without parole sentence. This means he will be sent to prison for the rest of his life for a crime committed at the age of 11- no judge or jury will have the discretion to modify this irrevocable sentence.  He will become the youngest person in the nation, and the world to receive this sentence.”

This case provides an example of the tremendously irrational approach to juvenile crime our nation has adopted.  The practice of sentencing youth to die in prison ignores what science, and common sense, tells us– children, by definition, are still growing and changing.  Children, even those convicted of serious crimes, are not simply adults in smaller form.  Their brains are not fully developed and therefore, they are more impressionable and more impulsive than adults.  They have less capacity to consider the consequences of their actions, but greater capacity to reform their behavior.

It is irresponsible and immoral to simply give up on them for life.  Instead, youth convicted of serious crimes should have incentives to improve their behavior and reform themselves so that they may, one day, return to our communities as productive citizens.”

-###-

The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth is a national campaign dedicated to ending the practice of sentencing youth to life in prison without the opportunity to prove remorse and rehabilitation.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20101200345

By Jeff Eckhoff

The lawyer for a 31-year-old woman serving life in prison for a murder she committed as a teen called Tuesday on the Iowa Supreme Court to treat children differently under the state’s sentencing laws.

“It is our position that a judgment that there is no distinction between a child of 14 and an adult” is improper, said attorney Brian Stevenson of Equal Justice Initiatives, an Alabama-based juvenile-advocate group. “To say to any child of 14 that ‘you’re only fit to die in prison’ is cruel and unusual.”

A state lawyer countered that some crimes deserve an absolute punishment regardless of age.

“I think we all agree that we don’t want this to happen to a typical 14-year-old,” Assistant Iowa Attorney General Thomas Andrews told the justices. “But Ruthann Veal is not a typical 14-year-old.”

Veal was a heavily abused child whom Andrews described as “a violent recidivist.” Court records say she was 14 years and 11 months old in June 1993 when she fled from a juvenile group home, entered the Waterloo home of Catherine Haynes, 66, grabbed a kitchen knife and attacked her.

Read More . . .

http://www.newsweek.com/id/230920

By Ellis Cose

One day, treatment of young people who run afoul of the law may be guided by logic rather than politics, prejudice, and uninformed passion. That was the implicit message of a report delivered to New York Gov. David Paterson last month, just in time for Christmas. The report, from the governor’s task force on reforming criminal justice, came on the heels of a U.S. Justice Department investigation that found New York’s juvenile penal system to be tragically mismanaged.

Youngsters in custody were routinely assaulted by staffers. Beatings were so severe that teeth were knocked out, bones were broken, and some kids were rendered unconscious. The assaults were sometimes sparked by infractions no more serious than laughing or stealing a cookie. The incarceration and the primitive methods accompanying it came at a substantial cost: $210,000 a year per child. Wouldn’t it make more sense, task-force members reasoned, to reserve incarceration for those who posed a threat to public safety? For youngsters who are not deemed dangerous, other methods seem more reasonable. “The state should treat and rehabilitate them, not hurt and harden them,” wrote the task force.

Read More. . .

http://www.omaha.com/article/20100108/NEWS01/701089915/-1/frontpage

By Paul Hammel

LINCOLN — Two studies commissioned by the Nebraska Legislature suggest that the state’s judicial system for juveniles is broken and must be changed to properly address cases of abuse and neglect, youth crime and truancy.

Reports on the studies, released Thursday at a public hearing, cited problems such as inadequately trained and overworked attorneys, lack of attorney-child consultation, and a lack of mental health services for juveniles.

One study indicated that the state’s system of appointing lawyers as guardians ad litem to advocate for a child’s best interests in abuse and neglect cases was a “cruel fraud” because the attorneys often don’t meet with their clients and end up serving as a “rubber stamp” rather than an advocate.

“It makes it look like there is a voice for Nebraska’s children in the court process, but in fact, that voice is mute,” concluded a report by the National Association of Counsel for Children, a child advocacy group based in Aurora, Colo.

Read More. . .