Prometheus 6

The legislators read and watch the same relentless stream of newspaper and television reports of drive-by shootings, drug shootouts, and gang wars, most of them involving young blacks. This confirms the terrified feeling that many Americans have that young people – especially young black males – are out of control.

They are convinced that teen violence has spawned a new class of youthful "super predators" and that the juvenile justice system is far too easy on them.

The notion that juveniles are running wild though is a myth.

More on this point in the next post.

Jena Six Case Shows Black Teens Get Short End of Stick
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Sep 16, 2007

Editor’s note: When a Louisiana judge locked up six black teens in the Jena case an investigative team cried foul. On Sept. 14, an appeals court vacated the remaining conviction for second degree battery against one of the accused, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court. NAM editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson examines the way the justice system is weighted against blacks.

Four years before an indifferent, drowsy press and public finally fumed at the news that a prosecutor and judge tossed the book at six black teens in a small Louisiana town for beating up a white teen following a racially charged incident, a Louisiana legislative investigating team sternly warned that the state’s juvenile justice system was horribly mangled.

It found that the state couldn’t lock up juveniles fast enough for mostly non-violent crimes. The team noted that the sentences slapped on them were wildly out of proportion to their crimes, and that the kids had almost no access to counseling, job and skills training, and family support programs that could ensure that they didn’t wind up back in the slammer.

Though alternative sentencing programs are far more cost effective than jailing, they are scarce and under-funded, and Louisiana officials have resisted calls to increase funding and resources to boost these programs.

The investigators also found unsurprisingly that black teens were hit with far stiffer sentences than white teens for the same crimes. It made no difference whether the whites had a prior history of criminal or bad behavior and the black teens were altar boys and had a squeaky clean record. The blacks still got harsher sentences. Countless studies show that a black teen is six times more likely to be tried and sentenced to prison than a young white, even when the crimes are similar, or even less severe than those committed by white teens.

Nationally, blacks make up 40 percent of youths tried in adult courts and nearly 60 percent of those sentenced to state prisons.

In Jena, the prosecutor, mostly because of the public furor over the case, reduced charges against two of the youth. But that’s an exception. Prosecutors nearly always push for hard time for offenders. This is infuriatingly apparent in Jena. One of the defendants, a star football player, was convicted on a reduced battery charge. Yet, he still could get a 15-year prison sentence.

The investigators implored the legislature to do something to correct the problem. They came up with a series of reform recommendations. They were largely ignored and four years later, state legislators have shown little inclination to fully enact the juvenile justice reforms.