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.

The Convention contains 53 articles reviewing and guaranteeing the basic human rights of all young people around the world.  Some of the articles are universally supported by politicians and public officials of every political stripe, such as Article 7’s claim that “[The child] …shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”  Some, on the other hand, are the source of a large amount of political debate and controversy in the US, for example, Article 37 prohibits the sentencing of minor to life imprisonment without the chance of parole, a practice employed in many U.S. states.  Clinton took a mixed approach to the Convention, perhaps because of its controversial nature.

UN Ambassador under Clinton, Madeline Albright, signed the bill in ‘95, but it was never sent on to the Senate.  Its possible that the administration looked into trying to pass it and feared rejection from the GOP’s strong standing in Congress at the time.  It could just as easily be true that he was unwilling to use the political capital needed to get it passed.  Either way Clinton left office with the Convention left in limbo.

Another section that met with criticism was article 24’s first clause, “States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.” (emphasis added)  The second Bush Administration objected to the convention and came out strongly against it in statements such as the one quoted here.

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child may be a positive tool for promoting child welfare for those countries that have adopted it. But we believe the text goes too far when it asserts entitlements based on economic, social and cultural rights. … The human rights-based approach … poses significant problems as used in this text.” (link)

-E. Michael Southwick, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs

The key word here is economic.  If Article 24 were carried to its natural conclusion there would be a responsibility for the federal government to give health insurance to the eight million American minors, that’s about 12% of all American kids (and growing in this economy) who are living without it.  A large portion of the conservative base could not stand such an intrusion on the free market, even if it means leaving the kids uninsured.  Some, such as the evangelical Christian aid organization World View and The Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child have endorsed the Convention but their work didn’t make many waves in the main stream media.  So the Convention remained out of sight and out of mind for the majority of the Bush years.

In the 2008 Presidential race Senators McCain and Obama were asked to weigh in on the Convention during a debate.  You can see each of their responses here.  The responses each come out a bit vague and political.  Now-President Obama goes so far as to call the situation embarrassing but then backs off to promise a “review” of the situation.  Well, now that he is in office I’d like to sit down and talk to him about that review.

I know as well as you do that the economy has seen better days Mr. President, but this signature is just the kind of thing our country needs to show that the new administration supports more international cooperation.  Oh and while you are fixing health care, make sure you get to each and every one of those eight million kids.

For more info on the convention, or to donate money to the effort to make it law, check out childrightscampaign.org/ or write to the President and tell him yourself.

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.

The boy was never read his rights, as if an eight year old is capable of understanding them anyway.  The boy was initially brought in for evidence, not as a suspect, less then a day after the death of his father.  He was questioned alone in a room with two armed police officers, neither his mother, nor stepmother were present and he was not offered or provided the services of an attorney.

Attorney and Pundit Lisa Bloom came out swinging with some great points about why the public should at least be suspicious of the video confession.  It is her belief that the police coerced the confession using the young boy’s troubled psychological state to get him to respond positively to a number of questions.  Children of this age are taught to follow the lead of adults and have not yet gained the independent thinking skills of older people.  From the beginning of the interrogation the boy maintained his innocence.  He later confessed after a long list of leading questions from the police authority figures helped him to revise his story several times. The police also lied to the boy during the questioning.  All this seems to add up to an unreliable statement made by a child under duress.

My intention in writing this is not to say that the boy is innocent. I have no idea if he is guilty or not, however there are some major problems with how the investigation is being done and those problems need to be examined.

Another problem is the releasing of the video to the public.  By doing so the police have poisoned the well of the country’s entire jury pool.  Defending a client in such a high profile case is a difficult task for any lawyer, but how can you defend a kid who’s confession was broadcast on every network’s prime-time news show twenty times last week?  It was horribly irresponsible to send the tape to the media.  The only possible explanation I can see is that the police in St. Johns feel so strongly that the boy is guilty that they intentionally poisoned the well to ensure a conviction.  This theory is blustered by the likelihood that the tape will never make it to trial because of the rights violations against the boy mentioned above.

The one good piece of news to come out about the trial is that although the police chief of the town intended to try the boy as an adult, the district attorney’s office stated that it intends to try the boy as a juvenile.

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.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the violent crime rate among youth in the US rose sharply.  During those years many states began to change their laws relating to minors in court.  In Massachusetts, for example, teens charged for murder, gun crimes, and gang related crimes are automatically go to adult court.  Some states like Wisconsin simply lowered the legal age of adulthood.  Now about 200,000 minors are charged as adults each year although the violent crime rate of minor in the US reached a high water mark in 1993 and (adjusted for population growth) has come back down below early 80s levels since ‘99.

Children Without Parole, a California group trying to end the life without parole sentence’s use on minors, shares this story.

“Starting at age 9, Sara suffered from severe depression for which she was hospitalized several times. She has attempted suicide on multiple occasions. At age 11, Sara met a 31-year-old man named “G.G.” Soon after they met, G.G. molested Sara, and began grooming her to become a prostitute. At age 13, Sara began working as a prostitute for G.G. She continued being molested by him and being used as a prostitute until just after she turned 16, when she killed G.G.

Sara is now 28. As she says, ‘The way I think now is very different than the way I thought then.’  In prison, Sara does whatever she can to keep up her hope. ‘I survive in here spiritually. I can’t give up. I read. I do whatever I can to be a better person.’”

-childrenwithoutparole.org

The reason I writing this today is that the AP just reported on an 8 year old boy in Arizona who was arrested for a double murder of his father Vincent Romero and another man Timothy Romans.  The boy was questioned at length by two armed officers with neither a parent nor legal council present.  In a state where minorities are hugely over represented in youth detention centers and children as young as eight may be tried as adults this young boy who must be in a state of shock and trauma may soon become #2228.

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