One Child at a Time

[Darcy Delaproser]

 

While United States citizens in Iraq are committing atrocities on incarcerated Iraqi civilians, at home here in the United States, we have our own incarceration problems.
Recently (particularly with the Bush administration, but with prior administrations too), the United States has decided to renege on international agreements and treaties when it deems those agreements to be an obstruction to U.S. current policies and political objectives. This is true in the arenas of environmental and trade issues, and in the United States' treatment of young people.
The United States is unlike most other countries with the death penalty which have abolished it for juvenile offenders. More than 72 countries with the death penalty do not execute juveniles. There are only 6 countries known to have executed juvenile offenders in the 1990s. Those countries are: the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Nigeria. According to the United Nations (1998), the US policy on executing juvenile offenders violates international laws and treaties signed or ratified by the United States (Juvenile Crime, Adult Adjudication, and the Death Penalty: Draconian Policies Revisited). Clearly, most of the world agrees that putting young people on death row is wrong. At one time, so did the United States.
In addition to the execution of juveniles, some of the other U.S. youth incarceration issues include concerns over abuse and overcrowding in California's Youth Authority as well as the increasing practice of allowing more juveniles to be tried in adult criminal courts. From 1992 through 1997, forty-four states and the District of Columbia passed laws making it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults 
If you feel these Juveniles deserve a voice to change their harsh sentencing then you are in the right place, if you think it will be difficult then welcome to my world..., it's time to act