Mr. President, Children Have Rights

On November 20th, 1989 the United Nations signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  Since then it has been signed and ratified by all members of the UN accept Somalia and the United States.  Although the Regan Administration had a large part in creating the Convention, it wasn’t signed until 1995 and still has yet to be legally ratified by the Senate (as required by the American Constitution).  In this article I’d like to give you a little more of the history of Washington’s relationship with the Convention and then move on to what should be done about it today and why.

Poisoning the Well… More on ‘Boy A’ from Arizona

The news media went crazy this week with the release of the supposed confession of the Arizona 3rd grader charged with shooting his father and another adult.  The video, which shows the boy seemingly admit to the murders toward the end of a 60 minute police interrogation, is drawing fire from some legal analysts.

Life Without a Chance

In the United States there are 2227 children in prison with no possibility of parole; the entire rest of the world has only 12. Fifty-nine percent of these children are incarcerated not for repeat offenses but for their first crime. Twenty-six percent are serving a murder sentence for a murder in which the kid was charged as an accessory or accomplice.  As with older counter parts spending time behind bars, minority children are sent away for life at much higher rates.  African American youth receive life without parole sentences at a rate ten times higher than white youth.  All this because the old system of sending kids through the juvenile court system was seen as soft on crime and politicians looking to pick up a few votes have in many cases eliminated separate courts for juvenile defendants.