Passage 5 De-Criminalizing Children
不要使儿童“被犯罪” 《纽约时报》

[00:00]As many as 150,000 children are sent to adult jails
[00:07]in this country every year often in connection with nonviolent offenses
[00:13]or arrests that do not lead to conviction.
[00:16]That places them at risk of being raped or battered
[00:21]and increases the chance they will end up as career criminals.
[00:27]To fix this problem,
[00:29]Congress needs to properly reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency
[00:35]and Prevention Act of 1974, under which states
[00:41]agreed to humanize juvenile justice policies in exchange
[00:47]for more federal aid. This act was largely bypassed in the 1990s
[00:54]when unfounded fears of an adolescent crime wave reached hysterical levels.
[01:01]When it reauthorizes the law - it is already three years late
[01:06]Congress should make it illegal for states to place children
[01:10]in adult prisons, perhaps with the exception of truly heinous criminals.
[01:17]The House has yet to introduce a new bill; in the Senate,
[01:22]an updated version has yet to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee.
[01:28]The Senate bill is less than ideal, but it does encourage the states
[01:33]to de-emphasize the practice of detaining children in adult jails before trial
[01:39]and requires them to better protect young people who end up there.
[01:46]Several states have begun to reform their systems:
[01:49]housing young people in juvenile facilities
[01:54]where they are better protected and can get mental health treatment
[01:59]even if they have been convicted in adult courts.
[02:03]The current version of the law threatens states with loss of federal aid
[02:09]if they make that decision. The Senate bill would do away with that language.
[02:15]The bill also would require states to phase out policies
[02:20]under which children are detained in either juvenile
[02:24]or adult facilities for offenses like violating curfew or smoking.
[02:31]These children should be dealt with through community-based counseling
[02:36]or family intervention programs, which are better for
[02:40]the child and for taxpayers.
[02:43]In addition, the bill increases financing for mentoring, drug treatment,
[02:52]mental health care and other programs that have been shown to
[02:56]keep children out of detainment in the first place.
[03:01]And it would require states to closely monitor and address racial inequities
[03:08]in their system. Studies show that black
[03:11]and Hispanic children get harsher treatment at all levels of
[03:16]the juvenile justice system than white children.
[03:20]The Senate bill is not perfect. But it represents a welcome step away
[03:26]from the cruel and self-defeating policies that subject children
[03:32]to irreparable harm at the hands of the state and puts them on a path
[03:38]that too often leads to a lifetime spent behind bars.