The War On Kids

     Many people aren't bothered by the way America is way out of step with the rest of the industrialized world in the number of youth we incarcerate for seriously long stretches of time. To them it's a simple matter of you do the crime; you serve the time. Law professor Cara Drinan isn't one of them. In The War On Kids: How American Juvenile Justice Lost Its Way she totally shreds that argument in an expert blend of law, science, and narratives of children captured by the system. 

     One of the boys whose story she shares, Kuntrell Jackson, was only fourteen when he committed the acts that resulted in a sentence of life in prison with possibility of parole. The sentencing judge claimed that he had chosen to throw his life away even though he had so much going for him. Drinan saw fit to disagree. She uses him as an example of how many kids are predestined for prison from the start. 

     First of all there are the factors in their early environments that damage them profoundly  physically, developmentally, cognitively, emotionally, and socially and make them much. more likely to enter the system: growing up in poverty, being BIPOC, a family history of incarceration, and exposure to violence in the home.

     And then there's the legal and policy mechanisms that further stack the deck against them:

*zero tolerance policies and the school to prison pipeline;

*transfer laws that let juveniles be tried and sentenced as adults;

*ineffective counsel for juveniles 

and *mandatory minimum sentences.

     But toward the back Drinan shares some rays of hope. Some Supreme Court decisions have gone in the right direction. And she outlines some powerful ways that in the war on kids kids and their allies have a fighting chance.

On a purrrsonal note, Eugene and I  had a lovely weekend at camp. It was sunny 🌞 and breezy and not too hot. We saw deer a couple of times.  There were hardly any mosquitoes. And we lucked out on yard sales. Sunday when we got home I decided to find the Riverside Park I'd discovered in 2020. It's really pretty and the same length as my other training routes. Now I have three. I got home just as the rain 🌧 that would last the rest of the day started. 

A great big shout out goes out to Eugene. 

Jules Hathaway 

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