For many criminals the justice system has a swift, but blunt message: You do the crime, you have to pay the time.

And instead of playing a game of basketball, figuring out what to wear for the next school day or deciding whom to take to the school prom, many Black youths today are finding themselves paying time behind bars at a rate faster than any time in recent memory, numerous records show.

In Philadelphia, according to numbers provided by the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit, 13 juveniles were arrested in connection with murder last year.

That number is up this year; so far, 19 juveniles have been arrested and charged with murder.

That’s not counting aggravated assaults, rape, theft and non-fatal shootings committed by young people.

According to experts, the causes are varied for these crimes: Poor economic and educational opportunities; a dysfunctional family base and mental and emotional illnesses are all components of the problem.

Civil rights activists have protested in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., that if living conditions do not change fast for Blacks under the age of 18, the prison crisis will only get worse.

It is also one of the most disturbing aspects of America’s incarcerated population that a disproportionately high and growing number of juvenile criminals are African-American.

In the city, the number of male juveniles held in the Philadelphia Prison System’s House of Correction averaged 98 per day for its fiscal year, which ends on June 30.

PPS spokesman Robert Eskind said that number was higher for fiscal year 2006, when the daily average reached 116.

For female juveniles, who are housed in the Riverside Correctional Facility, the average daily number for last year was four. For fiscal year 2006 the average daily number was six.

An alarming trend

In June, 4-year-old Nashay Little was wounded by gunfire as she played outside a relative’s home on Sigel Street in South Philadelphia.

To date, South Philadelphia has seen increasing incidence of youth-related violence, according to police reports.

Shortly after Nashay’s shooting, police arrested a 15-year-old African-American boy, charging him with attempted murder and related offenses.

Sadly, stories such as this one have become a common occurrence in the African-American community, where children are packing guns and using them indiscriminately.

According to researchers at The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch, young offenders are too often perceived by mainstream America as being “super predators,” a term coined by University of Pennsylvania professor John J. Dilulio in the 1990s.

The term has been used to define youthful criminals who kill, rob and rape without feeling guilt or a sense of conscience.

Chad Dion Lassiter, adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, said Black and Hispanic youths are being stereotyped as violent and incorrigible.

“The popular media embellishes them with images that are provocative, exaggerated, distorted and racially biased,” he said. “Many of these Black juveniles are being stigmatized as incorrigible, hostile and dangerous.”

Other experts say the reasons the juvenile prison populations are growing are discriminatory practices within the judicial system.

The outcome is also the result of a harsh political reality that in recent decades has moved the courts to try some youthful criminals as adults because of the severity of their crimes.

This disparity has led to a rise in the number of Black and Hispanic youths in prison.

“Courts began prosecuting such cases in adult court beginning in the 1980s as a result of the increasing number of violent crimes committed by younger and younger offenders,” said Alison Parker, acting director of U.S. Programs for Human Rights Watch.

“There was a time in America when juvenile criminal cases would be adjudicated in juvenile courts, where consideration for the immaturity of the offenders was taken into consideration,” she said. “Children can commit terrible crimes, but when they do, they should be held accountable for them, but in a manner that reflects their capacity for rehabilitation. In the United States the punishment is all too often no different from that given to adults.”

Studies conducted by the United States Department of Justice, Human Rights Watch and other independent research groups indicate a great disparity between the way youths of color are treated by the justice system and the way white youths are punished.

“We see it all too often in the justice system,” Lassiter said. “Black and Hispanic youth generally get sentenced to more prison time than their white counterparts. Far too often, youthful Black or Hispanic offenders are being tried as adults whereas, according to researchers, cases involving white youths are often, but not always, referred to juvenile courts.”

Some young people are certainly guilty of committing heinous crimes. But according to a study conducted by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, entitled “The Rest of Their Lives,” more than half, at least 59 percent, are first-time offenders and deserve at least a chance for rehabilitation.

The report also examined the extent to which young offenders, who more often than not are so-called minorities, face harsher penalties than their white counterparts. 

“The public may believe that children who receive life without parole sentences are ‘super-predators’ with long records of vicious crimes,” the report stated. “In fact, an estimated 59 percent received the sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes.”

The report goes on to say while the vast majority of these juveniles were convicted of murder, an estimated 26 percent were convicted of felony murder, in which the teen participated in a robbery or burglary during which a co-participant committed murder, without the knowledge or intent of the teen.

According to the report, racial disparities are high. Nationwide, the estimated rate at which Black youths receive life without parole sentences is ten times greater than the rate for white youths.

Another report published by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates reform in prison sentencing protocols, stated thousands of child offenders’ cases are being automatically transferred into adult courts without judicial review.

“Fear of juvenile crime has reversed the long-accepted practice of treating young offenders in special juvenile courts,” said the report’s authors, Patricia Allard and Malcolm Young. “Thousands of children annually are now being transferred automatically and without judicial review, from juvenile court jurisdiction to adult criminal court and into adult corrections. The imposition of adult punishments, far from deterring crime, actually seems to produce an increase in criminal activity in comparison to the results obtained for children retained in the juvenile system.”

Young and Allard go on to state that reliance on the criminal courts and punishment ignores evidence that more effective responses to the problems of crime and violence exist outside the criminal justice system in therapeutic programs.

“The phrase ‘adult time for adult crime’ is catchy, but it reflects a poor understanding of criminal justice principles,” Parker said. “If the punishment is to fit the crime, we need to take in consideration both the nature of the offense and the moral culpability of the offender. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, the blameworthiness of children cannot be equated with that of adults, even when they commit the same crime. Their brains are different from adults.”

Parker cited a 2005 Supreme Court case, Roper v. Simmons, in which the court ruled that the execution of child offenders was unconstitutional, because juveniles are “categorically less culpable” than adult criminals.

“Children are susceptible to immature and often irresponsible behavior,” Parker said. “And they are vulnerable to negative pressures and influences. We’re not advocating that they should not be punished if they’ve committed a crime and held accountable. But we need to remember that they are children. We’re not excusing their behavior, but the point is, how can we as a society say that our children are beyond rehabilitation?

“Our report showed that for murder, an African-American youth is 11 times more likely to be sentenced to life in prison than a white youth who is convicted of the same crime,” Parker said. “Most of these young people will die in prison, it’s a very sad story for African-American youth.”

The case of Stacey Torrance

In Philadelphia the story of Stacey Torrance illustrates the case of a child who was influenced by someone older and engaged in a criminal act without fully grasping the consequences.

It is also a textbook case of a child’s vulnerability to negative pressure.

The crime was a robbery that ended with the murder of the victim. Torrance is 33 now and has spent more time in prison than being a free man. He doesn’t deny his part in the robbery, but under Pennsylvania law he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

Torrance’s case is not an unusual in the United States, where since the 1980s the number of juveniles tried as adults has been steadily rising.

As with the number of African-American men and women being sentenced to prison, the number of Black juveniles being sentenced is also on the rise.

Torrance was 14 in 1988 when he committed his crime. He was arrested for the murder of Alexander Porter, a young man who was his girlfriend’s brother. He was about to enter the tenth grade at a Philadelphia high school under a magnet program for students who excelled academically.

He lived at home with his mother, a single parent.

Torrance was convicted of second-degree murder (felony murder in Pennsylvania) and sentenced to life without parole.

He had no juvenile record, and this was his first offense. He was charged directly in adult court and never had a juvenile transfer hearing.

According to court documents and police investigative reports, Torrance agreed to participate in a robbery with two adults, Henry Daniels, who was his cousin, and Kevin Pelzer. The victim was Alexander Porter.

They reportedly believed Porter had a lot of money because it was allegedly common knowledge that his family was involved in drug-dealing.  The plan involved coercing Porter to give over the keys to his apartment so that Daniels and Pelzer could rob it.

Prosecutors established that the three set up a drug transaction with Porter, in order to lure him to a meeting. When they met, Porter was bound and gagged.

They confiscated his keys, and stuffed him in the trunk of his car. Torrance allowed himself to be tied up in front of Porter but was released after Porter was locked in the trunk, then taken home so that the victim would later believe that Torrance had been murdered. Daniels and Pelzer drove Porter’s car, with him in the trunk, to a garage and parked it.

According to reports, Daniels and Pelzer pretended to murder Torrance to coerce Porter to give over the keys or face the same fate.

In Pelzer’s appeal, the court described what Pelzer and Daniels did in the 24 hours after Torrance left the scene: “Twice during the next 24 hours while Porter was kept in the car trunk, the kidnappers used Porter’s car on excursions.

“First, they used the vehicle to get to Porter's parents’ apartment to commit burglaries,” the court stated. “Pelzer and Daniels went home, slept for a few hours, then took Porter to a park. He was shot four times in the neck and back with a .25-caliber handgun, and left by the roadside, where his body was discovered the following day. While Porter was being bound, Torrance was led outside, supposedly to be punished, but actually to be released.”

Pelzer told the court: “Me and Daniels got into the boy’s car, the black shiny one, to drive Stacey home. I drove the car. We dropped Stacey off and returned to my house.”

In short, while Torrance agreed to participate in a robbery scheme, he was not present at Porter’s fatal shooting, nor was there evidence presented at trial that suggested he knew Daniels and Pelzer were going to murder Porter.

Investigations led police to believe that the murder itself was never planned. Torrance was convicted of second-degree murder and has been behind bars ever since.

In a published report Torrance wrote: “Convinced that I could make some money, I agreed with my cousin to rob this guy of his keys so that my cousin and his friend could rob the guy’s and his father’s apartment. But I had no idea that this guy would end up dead. Yes, I made a mistake. I associated with the wrong crowd. I engaged in committing a crime with them.

“However, is it fair that I spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime that was committed by someone else without my knowledge or without me being present?” he asked. “I feel sorry for the life that was lost in my case. I feel a deep sense of empathy for his family and what they must continue to endure in terms of pain. But this tragedy was never supposed to happen. I don’t absolve myself of all guilt. Out of naiveté, out of influence, out of the ignorance of knowing the consequences, I agreed to do a crime, a robbery.”

A national trend

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have discovered there are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children.

According to AI and HRW figures, in 1997, 7,400 offenders under age of 18 were admitted to state prisons, more than double the 3,400 admitted in 1985.

In 1999, more than 8,500 juveniles were held in adult jails, either tried or awaiting trial as adults. They are at risk. Children incarcerated in adult facilities are 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide, five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff members and 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon than children incarcerated in juvenile institutions.

For Black youths the statistics are dismal.

According to another report from The Sentencing Project entitled “Reducing Racial Disparity,” the effects of racial disparities are clearly seen in the juvenile justice system. While Black youths represent 15 percent of their age group within the general population, they represent 26 percent of juvenile arrests, 31 percent of referrals to juvenile court, 46 percent of waivers to adult court and 58 percent of juveniles sentenced to adult prison.

“The racial disparity challenges the basic values upon which the criminal justice system rests,” Parker said.

Bad influences

When a child commits a crime, especially a violent crime, the question invariably asked is, why did they do it?

There are reasons why they ended up on the streets with a gun in their hands and a body at their feet.

And far too often these children are Black.

There are reasons why the numbers of African-American and Hispanic juveniles are swelling the prisons from coast to coast as prison reform advocates, law enforcement officials and social experts confirm.

Anti-violence activists and social and judicial reformers suggest these youthful criminals are the byproducts of failed social programs, dysfunctional parents, a disinterested political will and a popular media that glorifies the violence, which energizes the subculture of the streets.

It is in the streets, with their own twisted rules of conduct, that these juveniles find role models who have been to prison themselves.

“Young Black males in particular are significantly over- represented in the juvenile justice system,” Lassiter said. “They’re involved in the selling of drugs, active in street gangs and exhibiting behaviors that violate traditional Black values.”

Former Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr., director of Amachi, a program that mentors the children of incarcerated parents, said one of the factors he sees that drives juveniles into prison is that children emulate what they see.

Many have parents or other relatives either in prison or on probation, and Goode said these children see no other future for themselves.

“I’ve seen entire families in prison, three and sometimes four generations.” he said. “Kids emulate their parents and often they come from the same environment. If children grow up in an environment where they see fighting, drug-selling, drug-using and criminal activity, they grow up doing what they see. I was in Oklahoma and I was speaking with a 6-year-old boy whose father was in prison. I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up and do you know what he said? He said he wanted to go to prison, like his father.”

The former mayor also spoke of cases where a father and son meet each other for the first time in prison and often either share the same cell or cell block. He said he has personally spoken to mothers who share a cell with their daughters.

In his book, “Race to Incarcerate,” Mark Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, wrote of the terrible impact on the Black community of having so many of its men, especially young men, in prison.

The Sentencing Project is a nonprofit agency that seeks to reform sentencing policies in the nation.

“What does it mean to a community to know that three out of ten boys growing up will spend time in prison?” Mauer asked. “What does it do to the fabric of the family and community to have such a substantial proportion of its young men enmeshed in the criminal justice system? What images and values are communicated to young people who see the prisoner as the most prominent, pervasive role model in the community? What is the effect on a community’s political influence when one quarter of the Black men in some states cannot vote as a result of a felony conviction?”

Chad D. Lassiter, a social worker and behavioral interventionist attached to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the overrepresentation of Black juveniles in the justice system could be attributed to several social issues.

But he was also emphatic about the influencing role the popular media play in the trend.

“I firmly believe that the challenges facing Black juveniles today are multiple, deeply rooted and exceedingly complex,” Lassiter said. “These challenges are major obstacles, which are dramatically disrupting the normal socialization of Black males and females and causing a disproportionate number of them to face a future that is indisputably bleak.”

Reversing the trend

It is by no means too late to effect change within the Black community and deter juveniles from crime.

In Philadelphia, programs such as Amachi, the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership and its companion program Adolescent Violence Reduction Partnership are seeing increasing rates of success among at-risk youths.

Amachi provides mentors for children whose parents are incarcerated.

Another group, Men United for a Better Philadelphia, is an organization that goes into distressed neighborhoods to dialogue with young Black and Hispanic youths.

Lassiter said what many local legislators, concerned law enforcement officials and anti-violence activists have been saying for several years: in order to turn things around it’s going to take a concerted and collective effort within the Black community to do so.

“We have to engage in what I like to call CPR, Cultural Pride Reinforcement,” he said. “We have to reinforce traditional values within our community and impart a sense of pride within them. We’re still dealing with the vestiges of slavery, but we can break that curse. Our children need to know they’re not meant to be behind bars; they’re meant for something greater.”

To counteract the dismal forecast of Black juveniles, the Black community must collectively assume the primary responsibility for the welfare, protection and spiritual development of our youth, according to Lassiter.

“There have to be after-school enrichment programs, and mentoring is essential,” he said. “There are a lot of churches involved in this, but we have to get them all on board, largely the church has been sort of absent from the youth violence.”

Lassiter outlined several aspects of social issues that have to be addressed to deter youths from engaging in criminal behavior. His aspects include: pulling families out of poverty; getting families prenatal and health care; and expanding access to and use of early childhood education programs, just to name a few.

Lassiter noted in his experience, children who have witnessed a shooting or murder have been traumatized. Within the Black community there are growing numbers of these children, who need a higher level of mental health care because of such trauma.

“There also has to be a moral imperative in the home that says certain kinds of behavior is not going to be tolerated,” Lassiter said. “We have to reach these kids before they get into trouble. We have to lead our children out of that violent mentality.”

Goode said the problem is not impossible to resolve.

“If we can mentor these children for one hour a week, every week for a year, we’ll see a drop in crime,” he said. “We can make a huge difference in the lives of these children. It’s a real problem, no question about it, but it is a problem than can be solved.”