Sending 13 year olds to adult prison is an appalling idea. Send them to prison, yes, but not to adult prisons.
As an ex-prison officer, I saw 18 year olds passed around like a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and come out broken beyond repair. It is sickening that certain politicians and segments of the media would wish this upon 13 year olds, by calling for them to be sentenced as adults.
13 year olds do not have full capacity to understand the possible consequences of their actions, something former NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet admitted when it was revealed he had worn a Nazi uniform when aged 18. Indeed, we can all recount foolish things that we did as teenagers that we would never dream of doing as adults.
Amazingly, however, Perrottet then went on to say that children as young as 14 should be treated as adults when they committed crimes. And these calls are being repeated by those in the community who have no idea what an adult prison would do to a child.
They are not angels – they are self-entitled little brats who do not think of the consequences of their actions. Sometimes the consequences are tragic, like the deaths of three women near Maryborough in Queensland just this week.
Should this kid go to gaol? Yes, he should, and for a long time. But not to an adult prison. People point to the fact that America incarcerates children as adults, but that is the only fact they consider.
Nobody considers the fact that the USA is the only advanced country in the world that has not signed the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has signed.
A 1989 study by Fagan and Vivona in the United States found that youth in adult prisons are 5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than youth in juvenile facilities. They are twice as likely to be assaulted by staff, 4.6 times more likely to commit suicide than the general adolescent population, and 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide than adolescents in juvenile detention centres.
Another study by Bishop, et al in 1996 found that juveniles who are tried and convicted as adults were 32% more likely to commit another crime in the future than juveniles tried and sentenced for similar crimes in the juvenile justice system.
These are the facts that are not widely considered. Instead, we have an emotional response calling for blood, led by politicians and media who are simply trying to win votes or readers.
Going back to the 18 year olds being brutalised in prisons, those who have never worked in a prison like to blame the prison officers who supposedly failed to stop the crimes before they occurred, and not the older inmates who did the brutalising.
Officers are very aware of this, and attempts have been made to isolate young offenders so this brutalisation does not occur. The result is that lawyers and “prison reformers” on the outside start screaming that isolation is an infringement of their human rights. These are people who have never stepped foot inside a prison.
The other matter is that you cannot charge an older inmate for a crime before the crime has actually been committed, and then it is too late. The same principle applies for police on the outside.
These kids should be punished, and punished harshly, but the effects of the punishment should also be considered. Do we want the kids to be raped, bashed or killed in an adult prison, and do we want to drive them to suicide, as the above studies have shown will be the case if they are sent there?
For most of us, that would be a resounding no, and anybody that said yes should perhaps reconsider their position.
References:
Bishop, D., Frazier, C., Lanza-Kaduce, L., & Winner, L. (1996). “The transfer of juveniles to criminal courts: Does it make a difference?”. Crime & Delinquency. 42 (2): 171–191. doi:10.1177/0011128796042002001. S2CID145336089
Fagan, J., Frost, M., & Vivona, T. S. (1989). “Youth in prisons and training schools: Perceptions and consequences of the treatment-custody dichotomy”. Juvenile and Family Court Journal. 40: 1–14. doi:10.1111/j.1755-6988.1989.tb00634
Craig Hill is a Brisbane-based Social Justice Campaigner, Writer, Teacher and Business Consultant. He has campaigned for social justice in Australia, promoted human rights in China and worked with the homeless in Honolulu. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Business, a Graduate Certificate in Education and a degree in Management. He is also the General Manager of The Australian Business and Leadership School.
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