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.Return to Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program page