Child Care That Doesn't Care

These truths we hold to be self evident.  Seems to me I’ve heard that somewhere, or a least read it.  It never impressed me that much because I thought in the main that it was just an easy way of not bothering to justify a belief and of avoiding a debate.  A rather pompous was of saying “If you have to ask, then you’ll never understand.”  But not always.  There are certain things that are, I believe, self evident. As an example my I offer for your consideration the fact that there is no written law in Britain against murder.  It is just an agreed fact that it is self-evidently wrong, and has been since time immemorial.  Murder is wrong; no one can disagree about that.  The written laws that exist there define murder, not its criminality, and set the penalty. 

There is one matter which, I suggest, we all agree is simply wrong, and that is maltreatment of children.  Not only the obvious ways of abusing them – violence and rape, for example – but unleashing on them the full majesty of the law that is normally reserved for adults.   It is an abuse to take a child, an as yet undeveloped human being, and decide that they will pretend that he is an adult and will treat him like one.  So that your eleven year old ends up in an adult court, is prosecuted as though he were twice his age, and if found guilty is given an adult sentence. In instances like this, prosecutors and judges are themselves child abusers, hiding behind the law that permits them to act this way the way a street corner flasher hides behind a greasy raincoat.

Most of the world sees this.   The Convention of the Rights of the Child has been ratified by all the member states of the UN except Somalia and the USA, both of which refused to because they wanted to be able to continue to execute children.  The age of criminality varies from one country to another, but most states acknowledge that at below a certain age children can not be assumed to have an adult awareness of the consequences of their actions.  It is likewise ridiculous to punish a full grown adult for crimes he or she may have committed when a child. Unless, of course, one is motivated by spite and vindictiveness.  It is vindictiveness that prevented a recent vote at the UN from being unanimous.  This imperfect but well-meaning organization called for a move to end the sentencing of anyone below eighteen to a life sentence for any crime on the correct grounds that it is simply wrong.  When the vote was taken it was 185 in favour and only one against. That one was the Unites States, where there are over seventy people serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed when they were 13 or 14.  That’s right – child abusing prosecutors and judges consigned these children to incarceration until they die.

It is such a strange thing that a nation that would have us believe that it is at the cutting edge of humanity and the advance of civilization  treats its miscreant children so foully.  Do the ordinary people actually know what is being done in their name?  Last year police officers entered a school not far from the town in Florida where I live and arrested two children, 9 and 10, for having painted in their drawing class what teachers thought was a picture that threatened violence.  Unbelievable though it may seem,  two kids painted a nasty picture so they were hauled away in handcuffs for it. This was not simply a matter of a small town police department out of control, even though it would be comforting to think that this was just a bunch of power-mad hicks going too far.   They did it because the law said they could, and they simply had not bothered to think of any other way of dealing with the situation. Maybe it was beyond their abilities to do so.

The main opposition to changing the law that allows children to be legally abused in this way comes from  conservative and religious groups – now there’s a surprise – who no doubt think that all true God fearing Christians are in favour of throwing delinquent children onto society’s garbage heap and forgetting them. Or at least making them as miserable as possible.  Just this month, seven guards at a torture camp for delinquent children were acquitted of manslaughter after one of their charges a 14-year old boy, fainted in the heat of midsummer Florida and instead  of seeking medical help they tried to revive him by kicking and beating him. He died.

The other objection to ratifying the Convention of the Rights of the Child is that t would infringe the rights of the individual States. When it comes to a matter of such obvious inhumanity I don’t give a monkey’s tits about States’ rights.  The States should bloody well know better anyway. There is no justification for cruelty to children, and trying them as adults, chaining them up, and imposing life sentences on them is cruelty.  The fact that such cruelty is inspired by judicial revenge is no excuse.

I do not believe, I simply refuse to believe, that the American in the street is fully behind this.  The ones I know are loving, nurturing parents, all-round good people, humane and compassionate all of them.  I wonder if they realize that the rest of the world has moved on and has abandoned these nineteenth century practices.  I’m convinced that if they took stock of the situation, and thought about it carefully, they would let their legislators know that this state of affairs is no longer acceptable.  How could anyone think otherwise?  Think of a 10-year old of your acquaintance, and then imagine him being led away crying in handcuffs (handcuffs!) by a couple of fully grown men in uniform.  Then try to justify why that isn’t obscene. There’s your self-evident truth for you.

This posting also appears at Buck Naked Politics

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Comments

[Mary Emken]

I read the artical on the 14 year old that was beaten to death in boot camp. I agree something is very wrong in our Judisial systom. But why are these parents sending there children off to these boot camps when they can't handle them?! Children do not ask to be born. Parents are putting their child in front of the t.v. with a bottle in their mouth and letting the t.v. do the parenting. ( Not all parents) Parents today need to be there with the children to channal aggressive urges into constructive action that begins in chilhood.The longer urges lingers,the harder it is to shake. Befor a baby even starts to talk it has feelings of irretation and anger and they experience the physical sensation that goes with them Once they start to grow up parents need to set rules and limits,"no hitting,treat others the way you want to be treated." Pay attention to their emotional state.Decide on consequences that fit the crime when they do something wrong. Most of all forgive them. Accept a child's apology and give them a hug and kiss. We all need a hug and kiss once in a while. This way your restoreing his or her belief in their self. They need to know you care. Just maybe a child can be prevented from being dragged off in hand cuffs in the future. We all want this madness to stop with children.

[vigilant20]

I'm not sure I agree with this one. Teenagers are more than old enough to understand what they are doing and the consequences of their actions. The problem is not that we are punishing them too harshly for their crimes, it's that we have teenagers out there raping and murdering people in the first place.

[Hill]

Powerful post, Nicholas.

Rich in reason, raw in the matters of the heart.

Fucking awesome post!

The very fact that we have government-sanctioned child abuse is one more reason to hang my head in shame at what our country has not only engaged in, but approved of.

The rise of the Christian Taliban and its grip on the politicians is, IMO, THE main reason that this form of heartbreaking child abuse is rampant today.

Fuckers.

Awesome post!

:)

[Wylie Kinson]

I'm so shocked I don't know what to say...
The story of the bootcamp murder - appalling. I can't understand the mentality of it. In fact, perhaps I'd better go stick my head back in the sands-of-ignorance. Stuff like this keeps me awake at night.

[Di]

I believe that the backlash from Columbine has been a complete overreaction and that as a result, children's "normal" behavior is being over-evaluated. When I was a kid and when generations of kids before me were out playing, we had toy guns, hid behind pretend bunkers and fell emotionally and emotively dead when "killed" by our opponents.

The "zero tolerance" policy has resulted in parents of first graders being called on the carpet for their child talking about bombing something. Shoot (pun intended)...they could have learned that on the History channel as easily as they could have learned it playing X-box games.

I think we, as a society, have to be vigilant in our awareness of what is going on in our children's lives and not turn a blind eye to indicators that things could be going awry. However, at such young ages, I don't think children can be held to the same standards and punished by the same laws as adults.

I believe (and I have NO proof of this) that children can actually be rehabilitated...whereas I am more inclined to believe that multiple adult transgressors become more inclined toward recidivism by our penal system.

I don't even want to re-read this...it probably makes more sense.

[EuroPosh]

some teenagers can be more cruel than adults, precisely because they don't have a full understanding of the consequences of their acions. they can't emphatize. does it mean that we should "forgive" them their cruelty, just because they don't fully understand their actions? ask someone who lost their loved one because some stupid kid with no imagination and conscience was in a killing mood.
my liberal heart is not that big.

another issue is that newcomers/voluntary immigrants to the U.S. make a choice and accept the country as it is. once you get a citizenship, that's a different story. then you can try to change what you don't like. until then, we can be outraged, but ultimately we chose to live here, so we should respect their laws, as ridiculous as they are.

another issue is doing what you're doing: communicating to Americans that somewhere else in the world "we don't kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong." (that's my bumper sticker) essentially, what I am saying is that getting outraged may be healthy, but it's not enough. action would be preferable, but if I don't count because I don't vote, then the second best thing is to convince those who can vote to take action and change the law.

end of my rambling speech. that's the effect of no sleep.

[supertiff]

i wake up every day and hope that the rest of the world knows that most of america doesn't fit the mold that we represent in the rest of the world...and then i wonder what i should do to make sure that they know it.
this post is a good brick in the wall.
thank you for writing it.

[marilyn]

Yesh... You can't very well say the US is a model for humane behavior anymore.

There are so many sides and nuances to this story. If I hear the phrase, "culture of death," from one more jerk who thinks the death penalty and the war in Iraq are good ideas, I think I'll scream.

Truth be told, there might be some teenagers that aren't rehabilitatable, but I'm not willing to make a judgement like that without at least trying to rehabilitate them and I don't see why a judge with any kind of heart should.

Parents are making poor decisions. Maybe we could do some kind of media blitz to remind them that they have a job to do. Maybe a show on MTV? Of course, it would probably have to have a fistfight and a sex scene or two.

[Joy Renee]

This is one of my pet peeves too. I get so wound up about it, I sputter when I try to talk about it. My mind sputters when I try to think about it. As for writing about it? I loose whatever eloquence I have. All I can do is weep. Or tell stories: the seeds of many of my stories have sprouted in the compost of the dark emotions aroused by empathy with the pain of a child.

That was also the catapult that shot me out of the Religious Fundamentalist mindset which fosters the concepts about the souls of children which justifies this kind of 'caring' for them.