This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for May 14, 1999

Interview on juvenile injustice:

As a guest on the show we have a speaker from the Revolutionary
Anti-Imperialist League to talk about juvenile crime, state response and
the juvenile justice system. 

What are RAIL's thoughts on juvenile crime in the wake of the Colorado
high school shootings?

First need to discuss what is crime.  Mainstream media has called this one
of the worst, if not the worst, mass murders of U$ history.  Knowing about
the history of the U$, it seems far-fetched to call the death of 13 youth
the worst mass murder. But this is how Amerikan's are taught to define
crime, as individual acts of senseless violence that they believe have no
rational or moral purpose.  The genocide of over 3/4 of all First Nation
members during the early days of settlerism is not considered criminal
because it was in efforts for amerikans to steal valuable land.  The same
can be said today about the bombing and starvation of millions of Iraqis
for U$ economic dominance in the Middle East. The real mass murders take
place everyday at the hands of the Amerikkkan government, but these crimes
against humanity are excused by the U$ as good diplomacy. So given this
realistic concept of U$ violence and imperialism, it is incorrect to say
that these kids are the worst mass murderer or a crazy new strain of
youth. Though what happened at Columbine is obviously horrible, as is any
death, it is not senseless.  These kids had an over all culture of
violence, not just video games, but U$ sponsored wars and poverty
infliction to learn from.  They also had the nudging on of the patriarchal
culture that defines power through dominance and submission.  For many
kids future choices to buy into the amerikkkan dream contradicts the
realities of oppression, environmental degradation and patriarchal
subservience to their families.  Maybe these kids just could not take how
decadent the U$ was anymore and cracked.

Unfortunately, most legislatures, cops and other amerikans do not see
society the way you describe. In fact, they are pushing forward the agenda
to make harsher laws and punish youth more severely. Can you talk about
that?

This is definitely the trend. The most important trend is adult
adjudication of juveniles. Traditionally, anyone under the age of 18 or 21
would have to be tried in the Juvenile court system.  Though far from a
righteous system, the Juvenile court was bound to the doctrine of
rehabilitation for youth. Youth records had to remain forever closed, most
of the time destroyed at age of adulthood, detained youth had to receive
some forms of counseling and education, and overall the system was less
harsh on youth then the adult counterpart. This is not to say it was at
all perfect. Stories like the deaths and beatings at places like Arizona
Boys Ranch were very common.  But there were at least some legal
repercussions if that information was put in the right hands. 

Today, the trend is toward treating juveniles as adults.  Many states are
lowering the age that a juvenile can be transferred to criminal court.
Most states are saying youth as young as 14, or in some cases 13, must be
directly transferred to criminal court if they allegedly committed a
felony offense such as murder, aggravated assault or rape. The scarier
trend is to automatically transfer a youth at any age to criminal court if
they allegedly committed a felony offense and were found to be wards of
the juvenile court in the past. Some states, like New Jersey, will
sentence, and put a child to death if they are only 13 years old.

The problem with this is that in the transfer process, many youth are not
receiving many rights to a fair trial. Though the U$ style court system is
not truly fair. The juvenile courts are even less fair. When a juvenile is
alleged to have committed a felony, s/he must oftentimes go through a
"fitness" trial decided only by the judge, without a jury. If the judge
decides that, there is enough evidence to convict the youth of a felony
crime, which oftentimes is just conjecture by the prosecution, the youth
is automatically declared unfit for juvenile court and transferred to
criminal court. The transfer stigmatizes the youth with a mark of guilty
before s/he was even tried. When they finally get to criminal court, they
are general assumption is that they had to have done something wrong to
get there. 

The U$ makes it a point to keep laws and rights hidden away in difficult
to find and read law books so youth don'9t know their rights when they are
arrested or in court. Lawyers will just tell a kid to plead guilty, rather
then go through the whole process of a trial, both for opportunistic
reasons and because many juvenile defenders are drastically over-booked.
Even if kids did know all their rights, they still would end up loosing
out. Such constitutional rights as private property and free-speech are
limited once a kid walks into a school, the place where most youth spend a
great deal of time.

So what does all this mean in terms of actual imprisonment?

It means that more youth are being criminalized, but in particular, more
Black, Latino and First Nation youth are locked up. Just look at the way
the Columbine kids were described, as gang members, a strange cult, and
not doing normal things like the rest of kids like joining sports and
hoping for a great amerikkkan future. There are very few cases when
amerikkkans use the term gang, and most often, that is when they demonize
Black and Latino youth. Also, "normal" in the U$ means white, middle-class
and complacent. Oppressed nation youth by definition are not that. They
are poor, do not have access to a future of middle-class leisure and most
of the time are really pissed off about their social position.  The kind
of media attention given to the Columbine kids plays right into the hands
of middle-class amerika, and therefore government leaders in their support
of new crime bills. Places like California, Illinois and New York have
many pending bills that want to automatically call gang affiliated crimes
felony offenses, thereby subject to federal criminal law. Just as the
government doesn'9t think the biggest organized crime group, namely cops,
are a gang, they don'9t think white kids who vandalize or do or sell drugs
are gangs either. In the worst case, they are in need of better parental
supervision, that is if they even are caught. Black and Latino kids do
such criminalized acts on the streets, where there are more cops then in
any other neighborhoods. In the end, they end up seeing the inside of
police stations, courts and jails more often.

Two activists summed the social reality up well. They said "The factors
that are most likely to keep one out of trouble with the law and out of
prison, such as a suburban living room instead of a tenement alley to
[commit a crime in], are the kinds of things money can buy..."   Also,
"The economics of the ghetto mean that for survival parallel illegal
economies have sprung up, further reinforcing the patterns of crime and
punishment...many young people give up early on a fruitless search for
meaningful employment and economic advancement.  They drop out of an
alienating school environment and look to crime as their only path to
economic gain."     

Boys who live in poor areas and are apprehended by the police for
delinquency are four to five times more likely to get a record than richer
boys. Another study concluded that a youth securely detained before
adjudication is more likely to be subsequently incarcerated. White youth
make up 80% of the total US population, and 31% of those sentenced to
facilities.  Minorities make up 20% of the total US population, and 69% of
youth in facilities. Of the youth incarcerated in the most restrictive
facilities, Training Schools house almost 50% of the Black youth juvenile
delinquents, while Private schools, the least restrictive, house almost
60% of the white youth juvenile delinquents. When it comes to waivers to
adult criminal jurisdictions, there was a 41% increase from the years
1989-1993 . While within that increase, Black youth case-waivers saw the
highest increase. Juveniles are 30% more likely to commit crimes again if
they were housed in adult prisons versus juvenile prisons, they have a
500% higher change of being sexually assaulted, 200% higher chance of
being beaten, and a 50% higher chance of being attacked with a weapon. .
In the example of the death penalty, 66% of the youth sentenced to death
in the US have been minorities. 

So what do you think this all means for ending the violence and reform of
violent youth?

First, you have know that studies show a 12% decrease in violent felonies
by youth between 94-96. In seemingly complete ignorance of this fact, the
overall rate for juvenile arrests has been on the rise since the late 80s
and early 90s, wherein the time between 1988 and 1992 saw an 11% increase,
compared to a 6% increase for adults.  So we can'9t talk about reform or
ending the violence anymore then we can say keeping someone in poverty
without an education will increase their job prospects. 

I do not think this system has anything to do with reform or ending
violence. The Juvenile Injustice system, much like its adult counterpart,
has nothing to do with reform, but instead is about economic security
devised via an entrenched system of racist ideology. Places like New York
and California have devised a budget that will spend more money on
building prisons then on educating youth. The reason is simple; prisons
are very profitable. In New York alone, something like 80% of all the
people locked up come from the five burrows. They are shipped to rural
upstate New York where otherwise poorly employed whites get well paying
jobs as prison constructors, guards and everything else. Also, Amerikkka
succeeds in locking up those disenfranchised parts of society, who may
otherwise rebel against the disproportionate access to resources. 

Some groups, like Amnesty International have suggested a concentrated
effort toward recognition of international human and children's rights
standards, policies and documents the United States has yet to sign.  I
think this move to hold the US responsible to the international community
for its actions is a progressive step in ending the injustices within the
US. 

However, RAIL suggests that the solution needs to go beyond the United
Nations, and instead more focus needs to be put on the needs of those most
directly involved.  Few can dispute that crime, in the US sense, is
related to poverty.  Why is poverty not a crime?  The mass round-up of
minority youth is not a question of policies that will make the injustice
system more just, but is directly related to the society that these youth
are born into, and the opportunities they have, or the lack of
opportunities, in their future. The language of today is about
super-predators and socio-paths, but it seems that the predator is
initially and foremost, poverty, and societies path is much more about
exclusion for those who end up in the juvenile injustice system, then it
is about active participation to end violence. 

So what is RAILs agenda for a more just system?

Right now we have to oppose and expose the oppressive nature of laws like
the newly proposed juvenile crime bill. It is a revision of the Juvenile
Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act which had provided a small, but
existent level of protection for youth. The drafts of the new bill hope to
put punishment on the agenda and state funding for states that lower the
age at which a juvenile can be adjudicated as an adult. We also have to
fight legal battles against other limitations on youth rights. However, in
all the legal battles we fight right now, we cannot be fooled into
thinking that we can win justice through the current system.  Amerika is
imperialist to the core, therefore innately nationally oppressive.  So all
our battles need to be fought in light of national self-determination for
oppressed nations, and concretely must be geared toward building
independent institutions of the oppressed.

Along with the Maoist Internationalist Movement, we are building programs
such as the Prison Legal Clinic and Free Books for Prisoners. We are
calling on all lawyers to donate their time to the struggle by helping us
fight legal battles against censorship and other injustices.

Now is the time to build public opinion for future armed struggle and
revolutionary change. In particular we need to educate the masses, and
organize them into opposing oppression.
 

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