A few years ago Ben Wilson, rated the top high school basketball player in the nation, was gunned down on a Chicago sidewalk by two teenagers. Tried as adults, the young murderers received maximum penalties: 40 years to the one who did the shooting, and 30 years to his accomplice.
Aside from the prominence of the victim, what happened in this case is not unusual or confined to large cities. Instead of using the juvenile courts—a resource designed to meet the needs of young offenders—more and more young people are being tried as adults, then warehoused in prisons where their survival is uncertain. At a cost to the taxpayers of nearly $20,000 a year, such confinement is an expensive and tragic mistake.
This disregard for young offenders is not surprising, given the current demand for a get-tough approach to crime. Law and order is the order of the day. One of the best ways to get elected to public office is to promise swift and harsh treatment of convicted criminals, regardless of age. “We’re sacrificing several hundred young people a year on the altar of political ambition,” lamented one juvenile court official, decrying the number of midteen offenders remanded to the adult court system.
In our legitimate concern over increasing crime, we demand justice. But trying the young criminal as an adult may be counterproductive. A likely target for the more hardened criminal, the teenager sent to an adult prison faces sexual abuse, psychological torture, and death. If he survives his term, he returns to society more hardened and embittered than when sentenced. “Once you lock a juvenile up, you have lost a kid,” says Jack Browne, Cook County’s chief probation officer.
Christians have been just as outspoken in supporting this trend to impose stiffer penalties on those who commit crimes. We have long been proponents of justice and fair play. We support the government’s responsibility to maintain order by punishing offenders (Rom. 13). And we also are compelled to care for the victims of crime—those who have lost a loved one to a senseless act of violence.
Too often, though, we have been silent on the issue of the young offender. In our understandable zeal to see justice done, we have allowed the courts to lump the teenage criminal in with his adult counterpart.
Yet there is much we could do to apply biblical principles of justice and compassion to the treatment of young criminals. Initially, we could take a stand against trying juveniles as adults. Most officials know the folly of such action but dare not oppose it. They believe it is what the public wants, and our silence merely confirms their assumption.
Christian attorneys also have an important role to play. Many consider criminal defense morally repugnant or otherwise uninviting. A concerned legal fraternity can be the first line of defense against turning a young offender into a hardened criminal. A Christian attorney can not only provide adequate defense, but also pursue every avenue to keep the defendant out of the adult penal system.
One of those avenues is restitution, a concept favored by a growing number of judges (see “Healing the Victims of Crime,” by Daniel W. Van Ness, CT, Nov. 21, 1986). With most young offenders, would it not make more sense to restrict their freedom, impose a strictly enforced and long-term program of service to their neighborhoods, and thus block the cycle of violence normally associated with sending young people to prison?
Christians also can respond by ministering to young offenders. The work that Charles Colson and his Prison Fellowship have done on the adult level needs to be expanded to include work with young offenders. Caring people need to be involved in chaplaincy service, tutoring, and family counseling ministries to the families of young criminals.
Certainly adult habitual offenders deserve long prison sentences. But most criminal justice experts say less than 15 percent of the adult prison population belongs in that group. A teenager—even one who has commited a serious crime—should not be confined with older, more cynical offenders.
Christians should be a voice of sensible enlightenment in the criminal justice system. We are not starry-eyed in our desire to reclaim the lives of youth who have gone astray. Proverbs 30 paints a clear picture of today’s young offenders, and we need not minimize that. But we also believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives.
Such power, sadly, will not bring children like Ben Wilson back. But it can keep another young man from returning, full of rage and hatred, to a society he views only with scorn.
There is nothing soft in that kind of justice.
By Gordon McLean, youth guidance director for Metro Chicago Youth For Christ. His ministry is directed at helping young people in street gangs and penal institutions.
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