Growing up too soon
Juvenile offenders should not be tried as adults
LORI ROBISON is a senior
news-editorial major and a
Daily Nebraskan colum
nist
The murderer said he was sorry.
He said he didn’t mean to kill those
five people on that fateful day in
Arkansas. He pleaded with his father to
take him home. He cried for his mother
to come and rescue him from the con
sequences of his actions.
Surety, he knew this could not be.
Surety, even a mentally imbalanced
killer realizes the futility of crying to
his parents in the hope that they can
unlock the jail cell doors and welcome
him back to Mom’s baked apple pie.
Surety, he guessed that it would be a
long, long time before he would ever be
free again.
But the killer’s statements betrayed
the depth of the naivety lodged firmly
in his 13-year-old brain.
This wasn’t a case of shoplifting or
quay painting graffiti on walls.
Mitchell Johnson and his accomplice
Andrew Golden weren’t sitting in this
locked facility because they got caught
passing notes in class. This was the big
time.
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aiuo woo, u y\ju u wtvuac uic ivini,
REALITY, the kind you can’t switch
channels on or take a break from to
refill your popcorn box.
And they certainly seemed, at first
glance, to have understood the gravity
of what they were planning to do that
day in Jonesboro, Ark.
Classmates would recall Johnson
saying he had “a lot of killing to do”
and was upset about being jilted by a
girl at school.
The two boys had enough presence
of mind to lure their victims out into an
open ambush with a false fire alarm.
They had the wherewithal to have a
getaway vehicle gassed up and ready to
go, packed with pistols and rifles and
hundreds of rounds of ammunition,
according to the town’s police.
And now, we want justice. Justice
for the little girls whose lives ended so
brutally that day. Justice for the teacher
who used her body as a shield to pro
tect a child from the gunfire raining
down on them. Justice for the 10
wounded. 1
And justice, as well, perhaps, for
making us all feel a little less secure in
an already insecure world.
i m iiui going 10 oomer you wiin a
tirade on how stricter gun control
would have prevented the tragedy in
Arkansas.
Nor will I bother trying to reason
out how a stricter law on the books in
Nebraska “may” have resulted in the
sixth grader at Rousseau Elementary in
Lincoln NOT having access to a gun
and getting suspended last week for
carrying it into school.
I won’t do that because, at the heart
of it all, more gun regulations and
stricter laws won’t save this nation’s
young people from the insanity of late
20th century reality.
A reality that glorifies, even capital
izes on, violence - on television, in
movies, magazines and music.
A reality that builds up “in-your
face” heroes who aren’t held responsi
ble for their actions at the same level as
the rest of us. A reality that has suc
ceeded in permeating the minds of 8
year-oids so extensively that many are
now obsessively aware of such non
childlike concerns as a few grams of
body fat.
In this real world, a new computer
game joined the ranks last week of
countless others in trying to outdo the
body count - with glazed-eyed players
assuming roles of “gangstas” and
“super bitches” to commit various
felonies on their way up the mob lad
der.
Players must hijack cars, shoot and
drive over cops, engage in pimping and
drug smuggling, murder and rob banks.
The game has an adult rating, but the
dissipation of the line between tragedy
and entertainment continues, as does
the shock value of such images, and
our kids know it
In this real world, a 13-year-old in
Fairfax, Va., was convicted in late
March of attempting to run a prostitu
tion ring at Langston Hughes Middle
School.
He told police last week he was
known as “Mr. Pimp” by some of his
classmates. The girls paid $10 each to
be a part of his sex club. At least one
Now, it is a fact that this man’s job
is to paint a human face on his client
and that Johnson should be afraid. And
it also may be a fact that many fmd it
difficult to feel any semblance of com
passion for this child or his accomplice
for deeds that, at best, can only be
described as “twisted,” at worst, “evil.”
And in response, many politicians
and community leaders have risen to
the sad occasion in Arkansas with
promises to lower the ages young
offenders can be prosecuted for adult
crimes, as if it were the very lack of
such legislation that resulted in this ter
rible crime.
In die last six years, almost all states
have lowered adult ages for crimes and
expanded the types of crimes that could
send a kid to an adult prison. The ages
for adult criminal status range from
state to state with 22 allowing adult
old adult and to the same conse
quences?
I defy parents anywhere to declare
that their 11- or 13-year-old is an adult
After all, as much as some in the politi
cal and judicial systems would hate to
admit it, these are kids. They are not
little versions of adults, with adult ways
of viewing the world and weighing
choices, even thought they may think
they are.
And how young do we take this
adult legal status? At what point do we
stop throwing these children away to
the lost cause of our so-called adult
“rehabilitation” system and the quick
but ineffective fix of getting them off
the streets for a few years while they
learn to be better criminals-at age 10?
How about 8?
Why have a separation of status at
all (some states are already contemplat
..
Matt Haney/DN
said the boy threatened her when she
refused to join. One 12-year-old girl is
currently facing charges of helping to
recruit others.
The boy’s lawyer, John Keats, said
his client’s crimes were based in fanta
sy.
“I think these kids watch too much
television,” he said.
He may have a point. But as tempt
ing as it can be to isolate a single cause
for our woes, television and video
games, like any other form of societal
expression, are a reflection of the times
we live in and the changing priorities of
a shell-shocked late 20th-century popu
lace.
Tom Furth, Johnson’s attorney, said
his client was “a very, very scared and
frightened little boy” and not the
embodiment of evil he’s been made out
to be.
prosecution for children 14 years old,
five at age 13 and two at age 12.
Three states, including Wisconsin,
allow children to be prosecuted as
adults at age 10, and the rest have no
minimum age set at all for such prose
cution.
Moreover, Congress is currently
contemplating two regulations con
cerning the issue. One would allow
prosecutors, not judges, to decide
whether to try kids as adults.
The other proposition would give
$ 1.5 billion in grants to states that
toughen guidelines to make prosecut
ing juveniles as adults more routine and
less discretionary.
But am I the only one out there who
shudders at the thought of society mak
ing it increasingly easier to hold 10- to
14-year-old children up to the same
standard of responsibility as a 40-year
ing it)? Why not throw a 6-year-old
who gets angry enough to beat his
brother to death away until he’s 21, only
to spend the remaining years of his
youth behind penitentiary bars?
Obviously, Johnson and Golden
should not and will not be allowed to
go free after what they’ve done.
Part of growing up is learning to
take responsibility for one’s actions.
But judging them and others like them
on an adult scale of responsibility
would probably do more harm than
good.
We don’t allow children to partake
in the adult worlds of alcohol, pornog
raphy or war (and for good reason);
why should the level of criminal conse
quences be an exception?
Because when seemingly healthy,
happy children kill other children
where they stand, a much more serious
• -
deep-down psychological problem pre
sents itself. These weren’t individuals
who turned bad after years of abuse
and negative outlooks. These were kids
with a twisted sense of reality.
These boys didn’t commit their hor
rible crimes simply because they knew
they were too young to be tried as
adults. The thought may of may not
have crept into their minds, but they
didn’t point these guns at their class
mates and take their lives simply
because Arkansas had no adult status
law on die books for them.
Anyone who believes that is overes
timating die comprehensive abilities of
a kid’s mind, and underestimating a
child’s capacity for fantasy.
Make no mistake, the suffering
these kids and kids like diem cause is
immense. The victims’ parents never
imagined that morning when they
kissed their kids goodbye it would be
for the last time. Their lives and die
lives of the townspeople will never be
die same.
But are we reallv to believe that anv
of us or our children will be made safer
somehow by transforming these KIDS
who kill to adult status? Are we to
believe that such measures would have
had a preventative effect on these obvi
ously disturbed young, incomplete
minds contemplating murder? Can the
murderous intent of childish innocence
(or ignorance) truly be governed the
same way as the mind of an adult?
A professor at the University of
Arkansas at Little Rock told reporters
that “it’s crises like (Jonesboro) that set
public policy.”
However, this case and cases like
them are not the norm. They don’t even
make up an iota of the overall juvenile
crime rate, which according to the
Justice Department dropped for the
second year in a row by 9.2 percent.
These kids e^t on a different men
tal plateau than pther ehildren who may
get angry, may even get enraged but
would never take that extra step toward
actual murder.
For these boys the key term was
“immediate gratification,” and their
whole preparation and method of
attack seemed a little too much like a
sequel to some grade B shoot-’em-up
flick.
A study from the University of
Nevada found juveniles sent to jail are
twice as likely to commit another crime
and three times more likely to commit a
violent crime than those sent to psychi
atric and character-building facilities. Is
throwing these disturbed kids to the
hardened criminals really the best
answer our society can muster?
Something obviously went terribly
wrong with Johnson and Golden.
Somewhere along the line, perhaps,
these boys received a message mat
guns equaled power over others and,
more importantly, that power over oth
ers was THE answer to their problems.
The increases in the kinds of crimes
kids are engaging in is indicative of a
larger ignorance on the part of many in
our culture. A larger unspoken consen
sus has come to infect some of our chil
dren, as it was bound to do, with the
belief that respect is dead and power
reigns supreme.
That intimidation is the end and a
gun is the means to get a point across,
and to hell with respect for others.
That’s the philosophy behind “Mr.
Pimp,” the philosophy behind that
Rousseau sixth-grader showing offhis
weapon of destruction, the philosophy
behind getting even with classmates by
killing them.
The old saying says that it takes a
village to raise a child. Perhaps some of
our children being given destructive
messages are taking them too much to
heart. That’s sometimes part of being a
child.
But having the village solve the
problem by forcing grown-up status
onto incomplete psyches is only going
to result in making angry, confused and
resentful adults.
And what village will claim respon
sibility for them then?