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July 18, 2012
Working Toward Justice for Children
A victory to spur us
on and give us hope
by
M arian W right E delman
On June 25th, the U.S. Su
preme Court in Miller v. Ala
bama banned mandatory sen
tences of life in prison without
parole for juveniles. This is a
major victory for children and
for America and a giant step
forward for justice for children.
Until this decision, America was the only
country in the world to routinely condemn
children as young as 13 and 14 to die in
prison. Now about two thousand people
who were sentenced to die in prison as juve
niles have hope for a new hearing and a new
sentence. While we are disappointed the
court did not ban the practice outright, we
must keep working toward justice for chil
dren and end the devastating cradle to prison
pipeline crisis that leads to marginalized lives,
imprisonment, and premature death.
Bryan Stevenson, the brilliant founder
and executive director of Equal Justice Initia
tive in Montgomery, Ala., argued this case
and the companion case Jackson v. Hobbs
before the Supreme Court. Earlier in June he
told participants at the Children’s Defense
Fund Freedom Schools National Training
session how he first became devoted to
helping children in our adult justice system:
“I was working on a case when a grand
mother called me, and this young boy had
been arrested. This boy was living in a house
where his mother had repeatedly been the
victim of a lot of sexual assault, a lot of
physical assault and domestic violence. And
one day this boy's stepfather came home,
and he just punched this boy's mother in the
face. She fell on the floor unconscious, and
the little boy tried to revive his mom and he
couldn't do it, and she was bleeding.
And we think he thought his mom was
dead.”
Bryan Stevenson continued with
his harrowing true crime story: “And
the man went into the bedroom and fell
asleep, and after he did that, this little
boy got up. He was about five feet tall,
14 years of age, under 100 pounds, and he
waited until the man went into the bedrobm
and fell asleep . . . and he went over to the
“The grandmother called me three days
later, and I went to the jail to see this little boy.
I started asking him questions, and no matter
what I asked him, this little boy just sat there.
I tried to ask him some more questions; he
just sat there. He wasn't responding to any
thing I said, and finally after 20 minutes, I
said, ‘Look, you got to talk to me. I can't help
you if you don't talk to me.’
“I got up and 1 walked around the table,
and I got my chair close to him . . . I started
leaning on him a little bit and leaning on him,
and finally, he leaned back. And when he
leaned back into me, I put my arm around him
and said, ‘Come on, tell me what's going on.’
Now, this child had no prior criminal history. He
had never been in trouble before. He was actually a
good student, no juvenile adjudications, and probably
would have been tried as a juvenile but for the fact that
this man was a deputy sheriff.
-B iyan Stevenson
man's dresser, and he pulled out this man's
handgun. And while the man was sleeping,
this little boy walked over to him, and he
pointed the gun at his head, and tragically at
point-blank range, he pulled the trigger. The
man was killed instantly.
“Now, this child had no prior criminal
history. He had never been in trouble before.
He was actually a good student, no juvenile
adjudications, and probably would have been
tried as a juvenile but for the fact that this man
was a deputy sheriff. And because he was a
deputy sheriff, the prosecutor insisted that
this child be tried as an adult, and the judge
certified him to stand trial as an adult and put
him in the adult jail.
This boy started crying, and through his
tears, he began talking to me not about what
happened at his house with his mom or his
stepdad, but he began talking to me about
what had happened at the jail. He told me on
the first night, he had been assaulted by
several men. Then he told me on the next
night, he had been sexually assaulted by
several men, and then he told me on the night
before I had gotten there, there were so many
people who had assaulted him, he actually
couldn't remember how many there had been.
“I held this little boy while he cried hysteri
cally for over an hour, and I left that jail
thinking this is our system— our system—
and so it became necessary for me to say
something.”
So now, Bryan Stevenson said, “I repre
sent these young people who have many
times been horribly abused. We put them in
adult prisons. There are 27 states that put
children in adult facilities where they are 10
times more likely to be the victims of sexual
assault, 25 times more likely to commit sui
cide, and there is this silence.” Once he saw
the truth, he knew he could never be among
those who stay silent. He also said: “Of all the
problems that I'm talking about [with the
treatment of juveniles in the adult justice
system]— and I’m talking about race and I'm
talking about poverty and I’m talking about
abuse of power and I'm talking about miscon
duct— the problem that we have got to con
front is hopelessness, the profound absence
of hope that is represented by the death
penalty, by life imprisonment without parole
for children, by mass incarceration, by the
way in which we are dealing with people. . .
I'll tell you something about hope. Where
there is hopelessness, there is always injus
tice, and you can never achieve justice with
out hopefulness.”
The Supreme Court’s historic decision to
abolish mandatory life in prison without pa
role sentences for children reinforces the
importance of never giving up hope as we all
keep speaking out and fighting for justice for
children. We still have so much work left to
do to solve the crisis of children in adult
prisons—but we now have a huge victory to
spur us on and give us more hope. Bryan
Stevenson helped changed the nation’s
course by saying something and doing some
thing, and so must we.
Marian Wright Edelman is president o f
the Children's Defense Fund.
Save Austerity Measures for the Next Boom
Government and
family spending
aren’t the same
by
D onald K aul
There are two compet
ing theories on how to
pull us out of the eco
nomic slump we're in, but
you'd hardly know it from
the debate going on in
Washington. Conserva
tives, who want us to cut our way to prosper
ity, keep drowning out those who think we
should be pumping money into the economy
by spending more on teachers, research,
roads, bridges, and other public works.
The small-government, budget-cutting
"austerity" advocates speak in strident, con
fident voices, while the proponents of more
government spending — the people called
"Keynesians" (after the 20th-century British
economist, John Maynard Keynes) — speak
in apologetic, barely audible tones, as though
they're afraid of offending someone.
economist who speaks in a loud, clear voice
President Barack Obama is the latter. He that irritates the heck out of conservatives.
sounds defensive when he puts forward one That is to say, he speaks sense.
of his anemic "stimulus" plans and is always
But not "common sense." Common sense
careful to balance expenditures with money is on the budget-cutters' side. When your
from a tax increase for the rich.
family has run up a lot of debt, cutting back
He's even gone so far as to bring out the on spending seems self-evidently the right
stale comparison equating a government in thing to do. Why are governments different?
debt with families that live beyond their
Krugman answers that as well and suc
means. There's only one solution for in cinctly as anyone I've read.
debted households and nations, conserva
"An economy is not like an indebted fam
tives say — belt-tightening.
ily," he wrote a few weeks ago. "Our debt is
And that's pretty much what Obama said mostly money we owe to each other; even
last year: We’ve run up too much debt, and more important, our income mostly comes
now we have to start tightening our belts. It from selling things to each other. Your spend
was a shot into every Keynesian's heart.
ing is my income, and my spending is your
"No, no," I wanted to shout. "That's their income. So what happens if everyone simul
argument, not yours." Fortunately, I didn't taneously slashes spending in an attempt to
shout it. (When you start yelling at the tele pay down debt? The answer is everyone's
vision set, you're only one step away from income falls ... and, as our incomes plunge,
wearing a tag with your name and address on our debt problem gets worse, not better."
it, so when you go out, you can find your way
"When the private sector is frantically
back home.)
trying to pay down debt," he adds, "the
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman public sector should do the opposite, spend
is a Keynesian, but not of the shrinking- ing when the private sector can't or won't. By
violet variety. He's a Nobel-Prize-winning all means let's balance our budget once th e ,
economy has recovered— but not now. The
boom, not the slump, is the right time for
austerity."
Sounds good to me, but they were still
teaching Keynes when I was in school.
In Europe today, apparently not so much.
But there's some indication that the hardliners
are backing off from their most draconian
prescriptions.
Not all conservatives are stupid, you
know. The intelligent ones fear that more
deficit spending in the face of a huge
national debt will trigger inflation that, in
the long run, will mean ruination. It's better
to let the econom y crash and rebuild it
from the ground up, they say.
Personally, I prefer to delay whatever
long-term m edicine we might need, be
cause it's entirely possible that we're able
to make things better now without govern
ment austerity. As Keynes, a witty man,
once said o f econom ists who counseled
the long view:
"In the long run, we are all dead."
OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives
. in Ann Arbor, Mich.