In the last decade it has become painfully evident that the entire system of juvenile justice, established over one hundred years ago to safeguard the special rights of children and youth, has been usurped by policies of "juvenile delinquency" and punishment. None of the presidential candidates understood nor addressed this reality last year. At the dawn of a new century U.S. children are more at risk from harsh, cruel and inhuman punishment, or from violence, than the children of any industrial democracy in the world. US children under the age of fifteen are twelve times more likely to die of gunfire, sixteen times more likely to be murdered by a gun and eleven times more likely to commit suicide than the children of Europe. All too often it is the violence against children that propels many into "delinquency."

There are seventy million children in the United States. One in two children live with a single parent at some point in life; one in three is born to unmarried parents, will be poor at some point in life or is behind a year in school. Nearly three million children are suspected of suffering from child abuse and neglect and 600,000 are in foster care. On any given day there are an estimated 100,000 children and youth in detention, corrections or shelter facilities in the United States and 9,000 children in adult jails. The U.S. has a higher proportion of children living in poverty than any other industrial country. Current plans to "leave no child behind" ignores the reality that most children in America do not get a start in life that insures human needs or human rights.

The treatment of minority youth belies the entire proposition of equal justice under the law. African American youth ages 10-17 represent just 15% of their age group but 26% of arrests, 32% of delinquency referrals to juvenile court; 41% of those detained in delinquency cases; 46% in corrections institutions and 52% of those transferred to adult court after judicial hearings.

Almost all of the fundamental goals and procedures once existing in juvenile court to safeguard the rights of children have been abandoned. Confidentiality is disappearing. There is a wholesale lowering of the age at which juveniles can be prosecuted as adults. There is a steady growth of mandatory minimums; the expansion of crime categories for automatic prosecution as adults; the granting of exclusive authority to prosecutors to decide which juveniles will be prosecuted as adults; and the widespread limiting of discretion for judges to overturn the decisions of prosecutors or police.

The United States has failed to live up to almost every important international standard for the treatment of children. It remains one of only two nations in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Critical child safety net policies exist in 23 other industrial countries, but not the United States. While the United States remains the unrivaled goliath in military technology, military exports, defense expenditures and billionaires, it ranks 17^th in low birth weight children, 18^th in the gap between rich and poor children, 21^st in eight grade math scores and 22^nd in infant mortality.

The causes of this tragedy are complex. Public policy has historically invested more in the human needs of those at the end of life than those at the beginning of life; more in higher education than lower education; more in education than early child development; more in prison cells than classrooms; and more in juvenile justice than insuring the rights of children and juveniles. Attitudes toward children and youth are plagued by denial, delusion and deception. Elected officials tell us that "children are our future" while they ignore the plight of children today.

To the entire direction of U.S. policy today toward children is at best misguided, and at worse, contrary to the fundamental international guarantees for human rights. We require child, youth, women and family impact requirements for all relevant policy at the federal, state, country and city levels, with corresponding budgetary analysis; a local criminal justice punishment build down and a local violence and crime prevention build up; widespread creation of family-school-community violence prevention and peace promotion strategies; and dozens of other policy initiatives which are not discussed today.

It would be a mistake to think that anything now being proposed at either the Federal or State level will reverse the long standing dis-investment in children and or the escalation of punishment. Pity the pious adults who have abandoned America’s children.

End, 752 Words, January 23, 2001

Adapted from the Power Point Presentation, JUVENILE JUSTICE OR JUVENILE RIGHTS?, to the California Judicial Council Conference, January 25-26, 2001, San Diego, California. Barry Weisberg, J.D, is Executive Director of the Violence Prevention Peace Promotion Strategy and an international consultant on global violence. In 1999 he presented REDUCING & PREVENTING GLOBAL VIOLENCE AGAINST AND BY CHILDREN to the World Violence and Children Conference.