New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice recently held a two-day conference entitled “Kids Behind Bars: Where’s the Justice in America’s Juvenile Justice System?” One of the presenters, Liz Ryan, president of the Campaign for Youth Justice, stated a startling statistic: “Some 250,000 children are prosecuted in adult criminal court [in America] each year.”
Exact figures from the rest of the world are difficult to come by… since such prosecutions are so rare elsewhere, no statistics are compiled. Once again we are a world leader in a negative category. One of the main reasons we’re the most punitive nation on the face of the earth is because, in addition to prosecuting juveniles as adults, we also routinely prosecute the mentally ill in this country.
We’re seemingly headed down that twin-lane bad road again (prosecuting a juvenile, who is also mentally ill) in the case of 17-year-old T.J. Lane, the youth charged in the horrific Chardon High School killings. While a court-appointed psychiatrist testified the young man is afflicted with “unspecified psychosis that include symptoms of schizophrenia… [and has a] history of auditory hallucinations and involuntary fantasies,” he nonetheless was ruled competent enough to stand trial and no doubt will be bound over as an adult in his next court appearance. In other words, since he was coherent enough (and perhaps medicated and sedated) when he appeared in court, he will most likely be charged as an adult for acts he carried out while he was an out-of-touch-with-reality juvenile.
In spite of the fact all mental health experts agree that teenagers’ brains are not as developed as adults and they therefore lack the capacity for adult judgment, some folks will nonetheless argue that Lane should be subjected to the same (and fullest possible) punishment that can be imposed on an adult. But these are the same folks who believe the earth is flat, the sun revolves around it, and that George W. Bush legitimately won the 2000 presidential election.
Here’s the really insane part: Even if the judge had found that Lane’s mental state was so impaired when he made his last court appearance that he could not understand the charges against him (or participate in his own defense), he would have then been sent to a mental institution where he would be medicated to the point of rendering him stable and sane enough to stand trial.
In other words, in this country (and only in this country, mind you), when a person is too mentally ill to comprehend what they did, we medicate them to the point where they are well enough to at least say they know what they did — in spite of the fact they were too sick to know what they were doing when they did it. In that way we can then punish them for doing something they did when they were too sick to know what they were doing when they did it. Whew! So, who really is crazy after all — them or us?
The legal move of bounding Lane over to adult court is being made so the death penalty can be hung over his head like the Sword of Damocles. It gives the prosecutor a weapon with which to force Lang’s attorneys to advise their under-aged client to accept a plea that will most likely assure the young man probably will never again in life walk as a free individual.
Laws in most of the other industrialized nations on earth are similar inasmuch as when a person is found to have been mentally ill when they committed a crime they are not sentenced to prison, but to a mental institution where they receive the appropriate treatment they need to get well. But in this country, with our overly-punitive mindset, not only are our prisons the largest mental institutions in the world (that do a terrible job of delivering mental health services), we also tend to sentence malefactors — no matter any extenuating circumstances — to forever and a day.
And we do so all the while loudly proclaiming to the rest of the world ours is a Christian nation… nonetheless studiously ignoring the parts of the Bible that speak of forgiveness and compassion.
Assuredly there are others thinking these same thoughts, but perhaps are being cowered into silence by the might of the all-powerful criminal justice system. But where is the clergy in all of this? How many sermons have been preached invoking the teachings of the Savior from Galilee? Their silence is deafening.
Certainly the actions of this young man deeply hurt innumerable people and caused suffering most of us will — thankfully — only have to imagine in our worst nightmares. But how, in heaven’s name, does making a media spectacle out of a seriously mentally ill 17-year-old boy heal the wounds his sickness caused?
This charade has to be played out in part to feed the media beast, which simply loves lurid stories and will milk them for all they’re worth — simply to attract viewers so that during commercial breaks the masses can be sold the latest miracle laundry detergent. Shame on us.
I know the citizens of Chardon are still hurting, grieving and experiencing a profound sense of loss. However, if, somehow, through their pain they could engage the “better angels of [their] nature” and say to the judicial system and the media that enough hurt has been caused already… that they don’t need to see this young man twist in the legal winds for some sort of sick retribution… retribution that won’t make anyone feel any better, and certainly won’t protect anyone in the future from another sick individual.
Indeed, it just may be that by treating T.J. Lane sanely and humanely the focus could be shifted from punitive to preventative. It’s hard for any society to effectively engage in both at the same time… we have to choose one path or the other. In this case do we allow the courts to act as insanely as this young perpetrator did, or can the good and decent people of Chardon show they are mature, compassionate human beings and say to the legal system “Stop, enough is enough”? Could this case be a teachable moment in our nation’s history?
Without a doubt taking such a path is asking much of the people who were hurt by the Chardon killings, but even if my own child were among the dead I pray this, indeed, is still the path I would be strong enough to take.
At some juncture we’re going to have to ask ourselves how did we get to this point… how did we get this way… how did we become the most irrationally punitive society of people to ever bestride the face of the earth? To quote Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Who’s Really Insane?”
Dick Peery
Excellent points, Mansfield. The chance for positive change seems to fade as incarceration becomes a cash cow and compassion that was once directed toward the poor now stops with the middle class.
Bill Rucki
Excellent points Mansfield and I think this is some of your best work as of late.