38: Special 3-Part Series: Criminal Justice: 15 Going on 28, Part 2

Sara and Misasha bring you the second part of their Criminal Justice series and another big issue affecting the 2020 Presidential election.

This episode focuses on the juvenile.

Pause for a moment and think about someone you know that’s a juvenile. Maybe you think of your kid, or maybe you think of yourself at 13. What were you like? Did you ever make any poor choices?

Listen in for a shocking history lesson and find out how old laws are impacting our children in the court system even today.

Show Highlights:

Being 13 is a difficult age. You often think you know everything, how to do everything, hormones are raging, you encounter peer pressure. What you don’t understand when you’re 13 is the consequences of your actions. There’s a reason why car rental companies do not rent to those under the age of 25.  Your brain does not fully develop until you’re 25. Misasha reads from an article regarding Jim Crow era laws resulting in a high rate of black kids being charged as adults in the State of Mississippi and shares her worst fears. She shares a story of a young teenager named Isaiah and his experience in the adult court system. In the last 25 years, nearly 5,000 Mississippi children have been charged as adults. Three out of every four are black. “Convict leasing”, where the State loaned out its prison population to work on plantations and build railroads, became popular after slavery but was outlawed at the end of the Civil War. In the late 1880’s state laws made no distinction between punishing children and punishing adults. By 1880, children and adolescents made up about one quarter of the prison population. As a result of national pressure, the State of Mississippi ended convict leasing in 1890, but it gave way to the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm. Even the youngest inmates at Parchman picked cotton and cultivated other cash crops for the state’s profits while incurring lashings from “Black Annie”, the name given to a thick leather strap. By the time the state got around to making separate jails for kids in 1916, the Governor was a well-known klansman by the name of Theodore Bilbo. Bilbo created so-called “training schools,” where the state could jail kids charged with breaking the law, homeless kids, abandoned kids, and even kids the courts thought might one day be criminals. More than two decades later, the 1940 Legislature created a separate court system for kids and at the same time permitted children as young as 14 to face criminal charges in adult court. Lawmakers wanted to take it even further. In 1942, the all-white body wrote a bill to permit children of any age to face criminal charges in adult court. But then-Governor Paul Johnson, Sr., vetoed this bill, arguing that the law was redundant. He already had approved $60,000 – nearly $1 million by today’s standards – to fund a “negro reformatory at Oakley State Farm.” This basically meant that there was no need to criminally prosecute younger kids when the state had a new plan in place to send black kids to Oakley. Laws passed in 1946 permitted kids as young as 13 to face criminal prosecution as adults. Their legacy remains seven decades later in the form of “original jurisdiction” laws. They are not unique to Mississippi: Twenty-six states automatically put children into the adult system at the moment of arrest for certain charges. Sara shares the impact on your brain of time spent in isolation, and the states that still allow solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure for juveniles: Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Texas, and Wyoming. Solitary confinement of juveniles is prohibited under the Federal Bureau of Prisons. There is no evidence that solitary confinement improves behavior. There is, however, a lot of evidence that shows that it is harmful to children. There are approximately 67,000 prisoners placed in these conditions in the United States and Canada at any given time. Of the kids charged as adults who have gone before a Mississippi judge in the last quarter-century, nearly 75% are black. While boys make up most of the system, the racial disparity among Mississippi girls in the system also is stunning: 60% are black. White kids are over twice as likely to get a plea bargain that’s known as a “non-adjudication of guilt.” The laws need to change, and we should reflect on what the President can do, what Congress needs to do, and how the court systems can address these issues. NEXT WEEK:  Sara and Misasha share their thoughts on key issues relating to the criminal justice system surrounding the 2020 election.

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Suggested Reading

Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky

Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate