The Death Penalty Kills Children
AnnieChrust@yahoo.com

This is an exerpt from a longer paper I wrote in Development Anthropology (studying the problems in developing nations) on Child Labor and Abuse. I think it is one of the most significant parts of the paper, aside from Thailand's 800,000 child prostitutes (some as young as 8 years old). You can read the whole paper here (its not well cited and fairly statistical).

In 1995, The Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project charged that substantial numbers of the children confined by the state of Louisiana in its four post-adjudication correctional facilities are regularly physically abused by guards, were improperly kept in isolation for long periods of time, and were improperly restrained by handcuffs.

According to one report, the children have become so accustom to physical abuse in their lives that they almost expect it from the guards. The children reported being hit with handcuffs, brooms and radios and being slapped and kicked. They can complain to the superintendent, but the children have seen guards rip up their complaints or find that their complaints are never passed along.

Neither Louisiana nor the Federal government has established mandatory standards for the conditions in which children may be confined in correctional facilities by the state. The Federal Department of Justice, Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, has a mandate to enforce the constitutional rights of children confined in correctional facilities but it has consistently under-used its authority.

Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization established in 1978 to monitor and promote the observance of human rights in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. The Children's Rights Project was established in 1994 to monitor human rights abuses against children throughout the world.

More juvenile offenders sit on death row in the United States than in any other country in the world, according to the Human Rights Watch. Nine juvenile offenders whose crimes were committed when they were under the age of eighteen have been executed in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Furthermore, executions of juvenile offenders are on the rise in the United States -- four of the nine were executed during the last six months of 1993.

Such executions are increasingly rare outside the United States. More than seventy countries that retain the death penalty by law have abolished it for offenders under eighteen. In 112 nations, the execution of minors is prohibited by treaty or legislation.

The United States has faced strong international condemnation for executing juveniles. Juveniles tend to be less capable of controlling their emotions, less mature in their judgment and sense of responsibility, less capable of seeing the consequences of their actions and more vulnerable to influences by others. If it is illegal for a juvenile to buy alcohol, cigarettes, join the army, marry without parental consent, and gamble in most states because they need protection and are not thought to be totally responsible for their actions, then the criminal laws should reflect the same ideas.