How Young Is Too Young?

Juveniles are pushing drugs, burglarizing residences, robbing, assaulting, maiming, killing, covering properties with painted filth, destroying our every effort to maintain a civilized society.

--Assemblyman George House

(R-Hughson) on need for his bill to disclose names of juvenile offenders

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In theory at least, kids deserve a second chance. In practice, fewer and fewer children may be getting one.

According to California lawmaker George House and other sponsors of new get-tough measures, kids arrested for crimes no longer deserve special treatment. They no longer deserve anonymity.

With juvenile crime on the rise--and with it, citizen anxiety over youthful lawlessness--holding youngsters not only legally, but publicly, accountable for their actions is a popular national trend.

According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, which tracks juvenile crimes as well as laws for dealing with them, the juvenile codes in 29 states now allow the names and sometimes the pictures of juveniles to be released to the public. In some cases, laws go so far as to require that the media be told the names of juveniles.

Since January 1995, California news organizations have had free access to the names of juveniles as young as 14 who are charged with serious crimes. Such new policies are placing newspapers and broadcasters in the uneasy role of gatekeeper, forcing them to reevaluate the media’s traditional taboo on publishing minor defendants’ names.

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Although most newspapers are holding fast to old habits of printing only the names of juveniles who are tried as adults, all are under pressure to remove the cloak of anonymity from a new generation of so-called superpredators--to quit protecting the privacy of kids who are being labeled “sociopaths” even before they enter high school.

“It turns my stomach whenever I read the line in the paper, ‘The teenager’s name is being withheld because he is a juvenile,’ ” a reader recently wrote to a Florida newspaper. “There are too many so-called juveniles giving birth, stealing, murdering, etc., to save their faces or names with this stupid law.”

In Pennsylvania, juvenile confidentiality became a key issue in the 1994 governor’s race, when a woman who was raped by a 15-year-old went on television to complain that the unnamed boy would not rate such protection if voters elected her candidate to the statehouse.

In Orange County, two daily newspapers were in conflict publicly over how to cover the story of a 14-year-old’s arrest in the killing of his mother in March. While the Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Times named the young suspect, the competing Orange County Register did not. But days later, the ombudsman for the Register told his readers that The Times was right, noting that the Register went a long way toward identifying the boy by naming his mother and his father.

The Times, like most major metropolitan newspapers, has no set policy for naming juveniles and decides each case on its individual merits.

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Under a proposed legislative package, supported by Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to “reintroduce shame,” police would release the names of any juvenile arrested for serious felonies, including burglary, rape and murder--as well as for graffiti, which Lungren calls “urban terrorism.”

The controversy over whether to use the new access to juveniles’ names has reached into many newsrooms, igniting emotional debates over the old question of whether protecting children’s identities helps or hurts their chances for rehabilitation.

“The news-gathering industry is split right down the middle on this issue,” says Nancy Woodhull, executive director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. Secrecy may obscure the juvenile justice system’s mistakes.

“We always have to ask, by not revealing a youngster’s name, are you protecting the child or are you doing the child a disservice?” Woodhull says. “The question comes down to who we are trying to protect . . . society or the youngster? And by shielding troubled kids for so long, have we brought on the problems we’re now facing?”

When America’s juvenile justice system was created in the late 19th century, it was based on the benevolent belief that “there are no bad children.” In the 1990s, with callous murders being attributed to boys and girls still in grade school, such faith in second chances can be difficult to sustain.

When 5-year-old Eric Morse was dropped by his heels from a 14th-story window by two of the toughest bullies in his South Chicago neighborhood, editors at the Chicago Tribune wrestled with identifying the murder suspects--one 10 years old, the other 11.

“We decided the best thing to do was to avoid using juvenile names, even in this high-profile horrific case . . . and even when so many of those around us were naming names,” recalls Deputy Managing Editor James O’Shea.

Recently, the paper used the boys’ nicknames for an in-depth look at the extraordinary court-ordered rehabilitation plan for Eric’s young killers, but the Tribune has no plans to fully name the boys in print.

“We have not regretted that decision,” says O’Shea, who believes that psychological profiles of the two boys have shown that perhaps they can still be saved. “At least, it’s worth trying. Both of these kids are fascinating to look at. In many ways, these same kids who’d go to Lake Michigan to catch frogs would toss a kid out the window. One of the boys was very kind to animals, collected and cared for stray dogs in his neighborhood.

“We need to find out what’s going on here. Where have kids gone wrong and how can we change that? That seems to be more important here than the question of publishing names,” O’Shea says.

Saundra Keyes, managing editor of the Miami Herald, refers to the “heinousness threshold” when describing her paper’s policy. “We make our decisions on a case-by-case basis, but if the act is a truly heinous one, we are far more likely to print more details, including names, than not.”

Such policies, say those who track juvenile crime, may contribute to the growing fear of youthful lawlessness. “A lot of statutory changes to identify juveniles and treat them as adults are coming about because of public perceptions that are driven by media reports of only the most violent stuff,” says Melissa Sickmund, senior research associate at the Pittsburgh-based Juvenile Justice Center.

“There is great confusion still within the system about how to treat juvenile offenders,” Sickmund says. “We recently were asked for advice in a case where a 15-year-old charged with murder in Louisiana wanted to buy cigarettes in jail and was told he was too young. Yet, when it comes to trying him for murder, he is being treated as an adult.”

Although national statistics show that 19% of those entering the justice system in 1994 for a violent crime were younger than 18, less than one-half of 1% of all the juveniles in the United States were arrested for murder, rape, robbery or aggravated assault that year.

“No matter how much violence we hear about in the news, if you look into court, you’ll see a lot of sorry little kids and only an occasional tough kid,” says Sickmund, who believes the system should operate on the assumption that there is “almost always” hope for rehabilitation.

To liberate children from the mistakes of their youth, juvenile courts have traditionally expunged juvenile records once they leave the system. The value of that clean slate is inestimable, say some of the high-profile men and women who have benefited from it.

A well-known federal judge who had served a juvenile sentence for car theft, for example, credits the system’s institutional amnesia with clearing the way for him to attend Harvard University and become a lawyer. “I would not have been able to become who I am today without the special protections of the juvenile justice system,” says the judge, who asked to remain anonymous.

Edward Humes, who won a court order to spend a year examining and writing about the Los Angeles County juvenile court from the inside, worries that the original purpose of juvenile confidentiality has long since been forgotten.

“The idea was to protect children from stigma,” says Hume, author of a new book, “No Matter How Loud I Shout” (Simon & Schuster). “That is why we have the euphemisms of the juvenile systems. The kids are not criminals, they are delinquents. They don’t have trials, but adjudications. Such special language and confidentiality is a holdover of days gone by that now only serves the purpose of shielding the system from scrutiny.”

Humes sides with other critics of the juvenile system in his belief that it is unrealistic to think public exposure will deter kids from crime. Adolescents, say many criminologists, don’t usually think about cause and effect, and no research exists to indicate that they think very seriously about consequences at all before committing a violent act.

“Look at the history of when we believe a child reaches the age of reason,” says Ramona Ripston, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “There is a tradition of presuming children to be incapable of criminal intent until they reach a certain age. We still believe in setting such age-based standards. You can’t drive until a certain age. You can’t drink alcohol, or vote.

“We have to keep our eye on the welfare of the child, but I for one am not certain that means keeping the child’s identity a secret,” Ripston says. “Maybe society needs to know who they are and how they are treated to truly protect them.”

A 14-year-old murderer Humes met in Juvenile Hall and identifies only as “Little Criminal” addressed the subject of society’s expectations of him in something he wrote last year.

Am I a criminal?

That’s what people say.

I don’t believe them, but

It’s on my mind day by day.

The thought of being a criminal

Scares me at night

Thinking of humanity, wanting

Me locked up tight.

If they can define criminal

To themselves, one day

I can say to them

Little Criminal’s no criminal

It’s just what people say.

“It’s about when I get out,” Little Criminal explained to Humes when he handed him the poem. “See, my record will be clean then. That’s the law too.”