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Maoist Internationalist Movement

Amerika's Plan for the Future: Arrest and Imprison Youth


MIM Notes 139, June 1, 1997
by MC53

Legislation passed in the House on May 8 promotes a stronger offensive in the war against youth. The bill -- called the Juvenile Crime Control Act of 1997 -- offers states $1.5 billion if they change state law and require that youth accused by the pigs of violent crimes be tried as adults in the white nation's courts -- certainly without a jury of their peers. The House also voted to stiffen the penalties against youth convicted of violent crimes in Federal court.(1)

The police, court systems and prisons are used as tools of social control and the primary and disproportionate targets Amerika is trying to control are members of oppressed nations. In 1988, the overall incarceration rate for youth was 221 per 100,000.(2) The rate for Latino youth was 481 per 100,000 and Black youth were incarcerated at a rate of 810 per 100,000. The war against youth is an attempt to head off social unrest that results from the oppressive settler nation's capitalist system. And the youth most affected by the ills of the system, oppressed nation youth, will be the primary targets in the increasing offensive.

If (or when) the bill passes in the Senate, it will mean that not only will youth be tried as adults, but that they will be incarcerated with adults. This means subjecting youth to the same or harsher conditions of slave labor, repressive living situations, denial of education and brutal guards faced by adult prisoners.

Studies have shown that youth held in the adult system commit another crime 30 percent more often than youth held in the juvenile justice system.(3) Additionally, some research demonstrates that youth in adult institutions are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff, and 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon than children confined in a juvenile facility.(3) While MIM does not believe the juvenile justice system serves the people or provides any measure of justice, these differences are important because they reveal how little the criminal injustice system cares about rehabilitating people. Youth in particular have years of potential productive life ahead of them and the criminal injustice system is happy to just throw away these lives. This is the result of a criminal injustice system that serves imperialism.

INCREASE REPRESSION TO GET MORE MONEY

To qualify for part of the $1.5 million in block grants, the states must: insure that youth "15 years or older who commit a serious violent crime be tried as an adult; impose escalating penalties against repeat juvenile offenders; establish a tracking system for minors who commit a second crime and make those records public, and allow juvenile court judges to issue court orders against the parents or guardians of convicted minors who do not properly supervise them."(1)

Already in the last three years, 50 states have changed laws to allow more youth to be tried as adults. At this time, only five states impose the measures that would qualify them for the grants. But the new legislation gives the remaining 45 states the incentive and green light to become more repressive than they are already, encouraging them with a financial incentive to radically restructure the juvenile justice systems to eradicate any last remnants directed at rehabilitation of youth.

Though the proposed law talks about youth 15 or older, it also attacks even younger. The bill requires that states routinely try 14 year olds as adults if they are charged with a violent crime.(1) The only way out of that would be if the Attorney General decided that it would be better (for the interests of the white nation) to try the 14 year- old youth as a juvenile. The law also allows the Attorney General to move the trial of a 13 year-old to adult court if it pleases the pigs.

This bill pushes the same measures as the defeated Violent Youth Predator Act of 1996 only now it has a nicer name. Clinton's administration apparently was not ecstatic about the bill because it did not include all of the harsher penalties which Clinton's Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Act of 1997 sought (which he introduced in Boston on February 18th.)

Part of the Clinton administration's proposal still pending is the creation of a new Office of Juvenile Crime Control and Prevention to increase the war against youth and gangs supposedly to fight crime and drugs. The OJCCP would have a budget of $500 million per year to lock up and oppress youth.(4) The OJCCP which would replace the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The stated goals of the existing office include: the deinstitutionalization of status offenders; the separation of juveniles from adult offenders; the removal of juveniles from adult jails and lock-ups; and the reduction of disproportionate minority confinement. The elimination of this office would remove any facade of justice for juveniles. The proposal for the OJCCP foreshadows a more draconian future for Amerika's youth.

The government says that Amerika needs to hurry and attack this so-called youth crime problem before the number of youth increases to a record level in the next few years. MIM says that youth need to hurry and join the movement to build a society that doesn't force kids to suffer from the injustices of capitalism and patriarchy and national oppression. The Amerikan government is not working in the interest of youth, especially youth from oppressed nations. It will take a revolution to achieve self- determination of the oppressed nations and continued struggle to ensure that youth are not the targets of oppression.

EDUCATION IGNORED IN FAVOR OF INCARCERATION

At the same time the Amerikan government was increasing its power to harass and incarcerate youth, the government also shot down the part of the education plan which would have spent $5 billion to repair and rebuild schools over the next four years.(5)

Even this money would not have been enough to address fully the need to improve urban and poor students' schools. The 1995 estimate was that it would take $112 billion just to repair substandard and dangerous school buildings. The New York Times reported that one-third of schools require major repairs or need to be replaced and that almost half of the schools don't have the electrical capacity to support computers. Students in some urban area schools have to hold their classes in the hallways because of overcrowding.

Amerikan schools are better than those in Third World countries where the Amerikan government can more easily get away with murder and genocide against the people. But the condition of urban and poor students' schools is the first piece of evidence that the government does not concern itself with the welfare and betterment of youth, predominantly oppressed nation youth. The overcrowding of prisons serves as a justification for the proliferation of prisons. And the overcrowding of dilapidated urban schools drowns students out of the opportunities kids receive in the suburbs and pushes them on the streets ultimately serving as a justification for the proliferation of prisons.

ARRESTS AND BRUTALITY AGAINST YOUTH WILL INCREASE

MIM and RAIL have been increasing our coverage and activism to expose cases of pigs murdering youth and how this is a result of having an occupying force within the oppressed nations of the united snakes. This type of murder and brutality will only continue and increase with the proliferation of prisons, increase in pigs and prosecutors and the growth of for-profit-prisons and prison industries.

Klinton's war on youth will only increase and result in more incidences like the April 6th murder of Kevin Cedeno is Washington Heights, NY.(6) The 16 year-old oppressed nation youth was allegedly carrying a machete and the pig decided that was enough reason to murder him by shooting him in the back as he ran away. As evidenced by the criticisms by the masses at Kevin's funeral, the oppressed know that these cases are examples of the systematic and increasing genocide and slaughter of oppressed nationals. This is only going to get worse with the increase of the occupying force's power.

Even the wealthier or more privileged youth are affected by the increasing numbers of pigs and more aggressive repression against youth. The Chronicle of Higher Education conducted a study of all the four-year colleges and universities which have more than 5,000 students enrolled. Among these, the arrests for violation of drug laws rose 18% in 1995.(7) Most of the 'experts' studying this concluded that this was not because of increased use of drugs. It was because of increased pig enforcement and patrolling of the campuses.

No doubt, students that get arrested pay lower fines and have lower sentences than youth allegedly involved in gangs in urban areas. Nevertheless, students have historically played important roles in revolutionary struggles and increased patrolling for drugs, whether on the campuses or in urban areas, serves to control the youth of Amerika. Whether it's urban youth or oppressed nation youth being beaten, harassed and imprisoned, or white nation youth or youth on university campuses who want to build a society without environmental mass destruction and constant oppression, the future revolution will be sped up if you mobilize and work with MIM. Join RAIL or the MIM-led army and stop this system that depends on arresting and killing.

NOTES:
1. The New York Times. 9 May 1997. pp. A1 and A19.
2. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. As cited in Criminal Injustice ed. Elihu Rosenblatt. South End Press: 1996. p25.
3. http://www.aclu.org/news/n050897e.html
4. Youth Today March/April 1997. p. 38.
5. The New York Times. 9 May 1997, p. A12.
6. See The New York Times. 8 April 1997. p. A12 and 16 April 1997, page A20.
7. The New York Times. 16 March 1997, p. A13.

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