Dahleen Glanton: Charging teens as adults won't stop carjackings. It will create tougher criminals
Without question, the carjacking in Addison, Illinois, was heinous.
A 20-year-old woman was walking to her car in the parking lot of a Popeyes restaurant the night of Jan. 23 when three males confronted her and demanded her cellphone, cash and car keys.
Two of the offenders were armed, and they warned that if she refused, they would kill her. So she did what she was told.
The young men sped off in her car and drove all the way to the South Side of Chicago. Addison police were in pursuit, and when the suspects were cornered, two jumped out and ran. A 17-year-old was apprehended.
On the drive back to the suburbs, the teenager reportedly told the officers that he would be released from juvenile jail in a day and that he would come looking for them and shoot them. If this is true, the teen is not only immature; he’s stupid.
But that’s no reason for DuPage County prosecutors to attempt to bypass the juvenile justice system and charge him as an adult. If convicted of aggravated vehicular hijacking and armed robbery, the teenager could spend several decades in prison.
Certainly, the youth should be punished if he is guilty. But DuPage County prosecutors seem more interested in locking up kids for longer than the law requires than seeing to it that fair and equitable justice is served.
Perhaps a stronger case could be made for charging a youth as an adult when someone is severely injured or killed, as has happened in some carjackings in Chicago. But some prosecutors apparently feel as though they must send a strong message to these young criminals, regardless of the circumstances.
It doesn’t seem as though the message has gotten through. Such messages never do.
Chicago officials have been struggling with how to deal with the carjacking epidemic that has terrorized neighborhoods, particularly on Chicago's South Side, for more than a year. During the first three weeks of this year, more than 166 carjackings were reported.
These are serious crimes. Victims have been traumatized, paralyzed and killed.
But unlike the violence that has long devastated African American neighborhoods in Chicago, most of the culprits involved in the carjackings are kids.
According to police, the average age of the robbers is between 15 and 20. The youngest in the recent attacks was only 12 years old. While some of the cars are used to commit other crimes, much of the time they’re simply used for joyriding.
Something surely must be done, but locking kids up for the rest of their lives is not the best option.
In America, an astounding number of Black kids are fast-forwarded past the juvenile courts directly to adult criminal courts. Juvenile court judges are transferring Black youth to adult courts at some of the highest percentages in 30 years of data collection, according to a 2018 report by the National Association of Social Workers.
Though Black youth make up 14% of the total youth population in the U.S., they represent 53% of the youth defendants transferred to adult court for crimes against persons, the report said.
There’s a reason America has a juvenile justice system for youth under the age of 18. Though it is far from perfect, the juvenile system is intended to allow delinquent young people a chance at rehabilitation. It’s supposed to steer them back on track and give them a second chance at becoming productive citizens.
The system doesn’t always work, but the alternative is worse. Research shows that youth who are sent to adult prisons are more likely to die by suicide while in jail. They experience more psychiatric problems than young people in juvenile facilities. And they are more likely to commit additional crimes once they are released.
It might seem like an easy fix to charge a kid as an adult and get him out of the way. But society pays for it in the long term.
Without the treatment, education and support networks available to them in the juvenile system, they return to their neighborhoods more broken than they were when they went to jail. Over time, all of us pay the price for their lack of employment, poor housing and inability to care for their family.
The mere thought of being forced out of your car by a group of young men wielding a gun is terrifying for nearly anyone. On Chicago’s South Side, residents live with this fear day in and day out.
They have begged Chicago police to make them feel safe again, but like the gun violence that has plagued African American neighborhoods for decades, answers to the carjackings aren’t easy to come by.
But many Chicago residents understand something that some prosecutors do not: There is no easy fix.
Throwing juveniles behind bars to be groomed by lifetime criminals does not eliminate crime. It creates more lifetime criminals.
