WEBVTT - America's War On Children 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:13.200 M u um you know um pod? Was that an interest? 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:18.000 Is that how you start a show? Great? Do it? Literally, 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:22.320 I'll take I'll take anything at this point. Okay, well 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:28.720 just a grunt. I just don't Yeah, this is the bastards. 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.120 All do your job. This is behind the bastards. Continue. 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:33.800 Thank you, thank you, thank you. You know what I hate? 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.159 Sophie what Evans the host of this podcast? Do you 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:41.279 haven't introduced yourself? He is Robert Evans. Words words and 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.199 my guest today, Courtney Cossack and I are going to 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:46.360 sit quietly for an hour and a half and that's 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:52.800 going to be the podcast. No words. I'm doing a 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:56.080 bold new thing and podcasting, or we don't do anything 0:00:56.080 --> 0:01:00.360 here that bold. There's plenty of meditation pod us that 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.479 do that. People are allowed to meditate, people are not 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:08.080 allowed to meditate. I will I will kick your ass 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.440 if you meditate during our quiet podcast. Be really stressed 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.039 out the whole time. Courtney, how are you doing today? 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:20.240 You know, I'm pretty good. Considering. Considering is something happening? No, 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:24.080 just the world? Just the dumpster fire? Oh, I saw 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:28.520 a lovely dumpster fire the other night, so that they 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.200 could burn a police union down. Yeah, it was. It 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.600 was a good buck dumpster fire. Courtney, speaking of children, 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:42.320 do you like kids? Yeah? Yeah, not really? Okay, Well, um, 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:44.520 I was going to ask how you feel about incarcerating 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:48.440 children and penitentiaries for what most people would consider modest misbehavior. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:50.200 But I guess you're fine with that. So again back 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.360 to the ninety minutes of silence that we had planned. 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.920 I'm into civil rights. I mean, I feel like kids can. 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.400 I just don't want one. So kids get civil rights? 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.080 In your head, you're a fan of that. Okay, Okay, 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:05.920 that's a bold stance, children getting civil rights. Um, that's 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:07.600 the episode we're gonna talk about. What this is about 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.400 the war on children? Um, that that our country has 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.400 been fighting for for a while. Now did you did 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:15.480 you know we were fighting a war on children? I 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.520 it's been brought to my attention. Yeah, we fucking hate 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.800 kids in this country. We absolutely hate kids. It's it 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.720 fully rules how much this country hates kids. As of 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.200 right now this moment, about two hundred thousand children into 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.120 the adult criminal justice system every year, mostly for non 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:34.480 violent crimes. About ten thousand children are housed in adult 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:37.880 prisons and jails every single day. Uh, and about of 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:42.520 incarcerated kids are locked away in private, for profit facilities. 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.480 While the number of incarcerated children has fallen somewhat in 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.320 recent years, it is still massively escalated over where it 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.800 was in the past. In ninete, only a hundred thousand 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.519 or hundred and seven thousand children were incarcerated every year, 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.840 so it's roughly doubled since nineteen uh From nineteen eight three, 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.680 though tonight day to ninety seven, the number of juveniles 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.880 incarcerated and adult facilities jumped by around three hundred and 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:09.200 sixty six. So it used to be way lower than 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:11.520 it was back in the eighties, like like a fraction 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:13.840 of the number of kids were incarcerated as are now. 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.880 So that's cool. That is that is not cool. How 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:19.919 did we get here, Robert? How did we get here? Well? 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:21.919 I wish we were going to explain that, but again, 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:26.960 this podcast is mostly going to be ninety minutes of silence. Um, Okay, 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.400 I'll shut the funk up. It's okay, No, you shouldn't 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:32.160 shut the fun I need to. I'm I am very 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:34.680 strung at. I was getting shot at repeatedly by federal 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.240 agents again last night, so I'm a little bit I'm 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.760 a little bit punchy. I apologize, thank you for being 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.600 cool for me saying I'll take anything at this point 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:47.840 that grunt earlier fantastic. Let's do this all right, all right? 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.600 So Courtney, the US incarceraates children at a rate five 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.760 times higher than the next highest nation, South Africa. Um. 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:57.960 So like that that's where we are. Like, if you're looking, 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.640 if you're playing a global game, um, you're looking at like, 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.080 what are the things the United States does better? One 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:04.560 of the things the best, one of the things on 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:06.440 that short list, one of the things that no country 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.960 can take away from US, is like we're the best 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:13.640 at locking children away. We're so good at it. Yeah, well, 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:16.840 like we you think fucking Paraguay can lock up children, 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:19.440 Like they don't know shit about locking up kids in Paraguay. 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:22.520 They just let him roam, they start rome, They just 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:24.920 let him go on the streets like they're goddamn Like, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.080 uh juju bees, what's a juju bi? I don't know. 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:30.559 They let him out, they let them, they let him wander. 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.839 It's a problem. So in nineteen sixty, yeah, let's let's 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:37.160 talk about where this all started. How America got to 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.320 the point that it is now. With all these kids 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:44.719 not walking around and instead locked up in criminal facilities. Uh. 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.480 It started, well, kind of the the legal jurisprudence around 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.239 whether or not it's cool to throw kids in a small, 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.360 dark hole owned by the government. That all really started 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:56.839 to kick off in the nineteen sixties. Um, and for 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:01.279 a while they judges and stuff like pretty consistently cited 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.240 with kids having rights. It started in nineteen sixty four 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.840 with fifteen year old Gerald Galt. He was convicted of 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.320 juvenile delinquency by an Arizona juvenile judge and sentenced to 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.520 be incarcerated until age twenty one. So that was like 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:16.400 a seven year sentence, and his crime was making a 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.400 lewd phone call. Oh my god. Well, yeah, you got 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:22.000 a lock of kid away for a quarter of his 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.960 life for that ship, just during the formative years. No 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.919 big deal, He'll be fine and throw him in a hole. Yeah, 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:34.520 he made a dirty phone call. Six years, seven years Jesus. 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.080 So the young Mr Galt enjoyed no defense counsel, which 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.760 you might recognize as a violation of what this nation 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.400 considers to be his basic human rights. He was also 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.680 sentenced to a vastly higher penalty than an adult would 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:50.440 have received for the same crime, because again, fifteen years old, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.120 that's like a six year sentence. An adult at the 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.799 time charged with the same crime making a lewed phone 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.679 call would have effaced at most two months of jail. Um. 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:01.760 So were there was a lawsuit as a result of 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.680 Jared Galt's case, and his parents filed for a bit 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.479 of habeas corpus. Now, at the time, juveniles were not 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.919 allowed to appeal in California, so the Superior Court and 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.480 the Supreme Court of the state backed up this nonsense. 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.320 Galt's family appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court and 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:18.440 they agreed to hear the case for the specific purpose 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.600 of determining the procedural rights of a juvenile defendant. The 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.320 courts nineteen sixty seven decision determine that kids have the 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.480 same due process rights as adults, including the right to counsel. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.479 So that's good, that's a win. Yeah, I like that. 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.480 But wait, was this was he poor? Or how did 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:40.440 this even happen? Um? I mean it was Arizona. They 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.240 they you know, we'll talk a little bit about how 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.800 it happened, but the gist of it is that while 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.800 consistently in this period, like the Supreme Court kind of 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:51.960 tend has tend tend to decide on this on the 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.160 side of child's rights. A lot of judges really fucking 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.760 hated kids and a lot of cops really hated kids, 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.760 because those are both groups of people. I think a 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:03.400 lot of what it comes down to, based on at 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.440 least my reading, is that judges and cops are both 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.200 people who are used to receiving a certain kind of 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:13.200 respect um often a fear based respect, and kids don't 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.600 give a ship. And when you are disrespected by a 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:19.640 child as one of those types of people, because you're 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.120 that type of person, your instinct is to lock them 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.040 in a hole for a large chunk of their life. 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.560 Punishable character flaw. That's not good. I could call yelling 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:37.400 at the cops a character flaw. Yeah. So the Galt 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:39.920 case was the start of a series of major wins 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.080 in the field of children's legal rights. In Tinker v. 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:46.920 Des Moine's Independent Community School District in nineteen sixty nine case, 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.760 the court ruled that public school students cannot be punished 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.640 for expressing their personal opinions on campus, so long as 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:54.720 doing so does not interfere with the work of the 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:58.280 school or with other students. In nineteen seventy, the court 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.440 ruled the juveniles are constitutionally entitled to proof beyond a 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.960 reasonable doubt before they can be declared delinquent. The sixties were, 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:06.960 in general, a pretty good time to be an advocate 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.360 for the legal rights of children. This period of winds 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.000 occurred right up until nineteen seventy seven, which is the 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.840 year the court ruled on Ingraham v. Right. This is 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.960 the case that determined schools were not violating the Constitution 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.720 by quote paddling the recalcitant children on the buttocks with 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.520 the fat, flat wooden paddle measuring less than two feet long, 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:26.600 three to four inches wide and about one and a 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.000 half inch thick. Um. So that's nineteen seventy seven. The 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.040 court rules schools can still paddle kids. It's not limiting 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.000 their rights to paddle them. Children were, however, limited to 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.640 five licks from a paddle um, which is written into jurisprudence. 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:43.520 And that's that's why did you ever get hit in 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.600 the school by your teachers? I did not. I was 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.640 forced to uh crawl around on the floor. That was 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:53.960 probably the most terrible thing, but it was a pretty 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.640 bad punishment. Uh not hit though, Oh my god, I 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.160 can't imagine. My mom always tells me stories about getting 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.840 hit by nuns when she was in my school. Paddled. 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:11.960 Definitely paddled your school paddled. Yeah, was that legal? Yeah yeah, yeah, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.000 it's Oklahoma. Yeah yeah, I forgot about OKLAHOLM. Yeah. They 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.319 were like, of course you can paddle kids. Can you 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:19.800 not paddle kids? Is that Okay? That's the question we 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.640 have in Oklahoma because we're so busy paddle and kids. 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.880 So yeah, the Supreme Court rules and seventy seven that 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.000 you can paddle kids at school, you just can't lick 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:32.520 them more than five times. In ninety nine, another court 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:34.760 case rules that minors can be placed in state run 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.160 mental health facilities for basically no reason without any kind 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.600 of like do process really, um. And so in the 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.880 late seventies, this kind of trail of anti child court 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.480 cases continued and sort of the you know, this thing 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:49.880 that had started in the sixties with children getting you know, 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.599 awarded more and more or not, but having more and 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.160 more rights kind of recognized in court cases. That turns 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.560 around and uh, courts start chipping away at the rights 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.160 of children and to not be locked in dark holes 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.240 by the government for long periods of time. And this 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:08.000 continues until nineteen eighty four, when the Supreme Court rules 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.040 on Shall v. Martin and affirms that children do, in 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:15.439 fact have a lesser inherent interest in liberty than adults. Uh. 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.400 The justification for this is that they are always in 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:22.160 some form of custody. So while Galt affirmed, you know 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:23.719 that the first case we talked about a firm that 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:26.199 children had the right to the same due process as adults, 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:29.839 Shall flipped the table and declared that juvenile attention facilities 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.360 are basically the same as kids living at home or 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.000 in a foster facility. So it really doesn't matter if 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.920 kids get sentenced to something without having a lawyer, because 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.880 kids have no real liberty anyway, and the state putting 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.160 them in a hole is no different from their parents 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:48.640 putting them in a bedroom. Oh that God, who hurt 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:52.880 that guy? That's what we need to really investigate, Jesus. 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:54.280 I mean, the messed up thing is it's like, who 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:56.920 hurt that large room full of judges and all of 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.679 their aids who decided that was a good way. It's 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.320 kind of ad right to say that, to be like, 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.720 kids aren't interested in freedom, like so it's okay. Whatever 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:10.680 we did, Whe's okay. It's the most backwards thing, literally now. 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.040 According to a paper I found in the Temple Law Review, 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.760 the reason for this tragic reversal and the general decades 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.800 long trend towards less rights for children under trial is 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:20.920 that trial judges in the latter half of the twentieth 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.839 century really fucking hated kids. And I'm gonna quote from 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:27.440 that paper now right after I sneeze fucking tear gas. Okay. 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.760 The real actors who influenced juvenile justice were state juvenile 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.760 court judges and administrators, whose hostility to the principles of 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.240 GALT led many of them to ignore the decision from 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.160 the very beginning. Many trial level juvenile courts simply ignored 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.520 Galts thrust when it came to the actual provision of 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:46.320 council to juveniles. According to Professor Wally um lineark Quote, 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.679 studies in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties found that 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.760 few children were represented by counsel. The predominant reason is 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.360 that these juveniles waived their right to counsel, often without 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.680 being properly informed of the right. State courts also employed 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.520 insidious methods to ensure the juveniles from poor families, who 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.959 are supposed to benefit from the constitutional right to free 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.720 court assigned counsel, never were assigned a lawyer. In Florida, 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:10.520 for example, indigency rules were so strict that having five 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.760 dollars in the bank made a family ineligible for appointment 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.319 of counsel. Moreover, as Professor Liniak has explained, Florida parents 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.480 had to pay a forty dollar fee just to apply 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.960 for an indigency determination. So you see what they do 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:25.920 in places like you have the right to a lawyer 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:28.360 unless we determine you have too much money to get 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.360 a free lawyer. And we're saying five dollars is too much. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.120 That is so crazy. If your family net worth is 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.920 five dollars, you're doing way too well for a free lawyer. 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.120 Where are the social workers in all this? That's like 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.120 a whole another episode. Probably, Yeah, I mean it's christ underpaid, 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.760 often traumatized, and let's face it, in some cases, like 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.480 being very much a part of fucking these kids over 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:56.560 because some of them suck to Like it's it's a 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.640 whole mess, right, and it's this underfunded thing. Um, and yeah, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.880 it's just bad. There's not a lot. There's not a 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.360 lot looking out for poor kids in the states that 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.559 have the most protections for poor children, right, And Florida 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.520 is not the most protection state the Arizona of the 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:21.600 other side of the East coast, of the East coast. Yeah, 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:27.920 so accurate. Yeah, good stuff, everybody, good stuff. So yeah, 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.040 we're gonna be hearing a lot from Florida in this episode, 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:31.959 or also gonna hear a lot from trial judges who 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:34.319 hate children with a passion that boggles the mind. Um, 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.440 which is cool and good. Uh, And this was a 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.600 fun episode to write. Um, that didn't make me want 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.280 to commit federal crimes anyway. The whole situation um with 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.120 children's rights degenerated right up through the mid nineteen nineties, 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.160 which is when a study conducted by the American Bar 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.280 Association found that huge numbers of kids kids waived their 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:53.839 right to counsel without really knowing what they were doing. 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:57.360 As a result, the association's report wrote, many children charged 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.360 with crimes were literally left defenseless and Maryland of kids 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:05.319 charged with crimes waived their right to a lawyer. Ent 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.720 of Louisiana children did, as did fifty to seventy percent 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:10.880 of children in Florida and more than half of the 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.360 children in Georgia, Ohio and Kentucky who went before judges. 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:19.800 So that's a lot of kids not having lawyers. Um. 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:21.560 And I don't know if you know much about kids, 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:24.080 but one thing they're not good at is representing themselves 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:31.200 in court. My god, they really should be with our 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.480 education system, I don't know what the fuck. Yeah, it's 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:41.239 good stuff. Everything's good stuff. Um, everything's great stuff. I'm happy. 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.080 Another major change that happened in the nineteen or from 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:46.360 the nineteen seventies to the nineteen nineties was the ease 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.840 with which courts were allowed to treat juveniles as adults now. 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.600 Um as in most things, New York State led the 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:54.920 way in this. New York was like, we're not treating 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.160 kids like adults enough when we decide how long to 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.880 throw them into dark holes owned by the guff let's 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.760 change that. This is the state of New York and 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.240 this is the fight we're picking. Um. So in nineteen 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.520 seventy eight, they changed their laws in order to make 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.400 it possible for courts to prosecute children aged thirteen and 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:15.120 up an adult criminal court. Um, you know all those 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.480 hardened adult thirteen year olds that you know, Um, is 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:23.920 it like just for murder or I mean that was 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.840 kind of the justification, but it wound up being for 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.440 a lot of things, right the idea. The idea was 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.160 initially like, there's so many dangerous teenage predators, we have 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.120 to start treating them like adults. But like the people 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.720 who the kids who actually get tried as adults, most 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.480 of them are not murderers. So every state in the 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.240 Union followed New York's example to one extent or another, 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.000 making it easier to try children as adults. This whole 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.120 process really accelerated in the late nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.200 Is the crack epidemic fueld waves fears of a new 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.840 wave of child super predators. Age of offense thresholds were 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.640 reduced all around the nation, and politicians who had fought 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:01.640 for the right of children to be treated as children 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:06.440 were attacked for being soft on crime. Now, the two 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:10.120 folks most responsible for this, we're right wing criminologist John 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:14.680 Delulio and our old buddy James Q. Wilson. If you 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.480 remember listening through the Behind the Police mini series we did. 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.400 James Q. Wilson is the co author of the Broken 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:26.640 Windows Theory of crime um and coincidentally best friends with 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:28.800 the guys who wrote the racist book about i Q 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:34.400 the Bell Curve Um, which is far cool group. Dudes. Yeah, 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:39.320 call me for the barbecue, guys. Yeah, I'm gonna insinuate 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:44.760 uh series of racial attitudes towards policing and pushed them 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:46.920 so deeply into the zeit guys that people think that 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.200 they're actually just protecting their neighborhoods when they're in reality 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.480 contributed to something that could be viewed as almost an 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.600 active Jennessia. Sorry, I don't I lost I lost track 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:58.880 of the surfer pro voice I was doing after a 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:05.760 while there. Anyway, Okay, let's catch our breath for a second. 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.119 Just catch our breath for a second to that minutes 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.680 of silence? Ready, everyone, back to the ninety minutes of silence. 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.480 So John Delulio and James Q. Wilson, they write a 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:19.200 paper in arguing that the US is about to experience 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:24.639 a wave of unprecedented youth crime driven by single parent families, crack, cocaine, 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:26.680 and a bunch of other stuff that was all basically 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:31.120 coded language for the existence of black people. Wilson predicted 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.200 that by two thousand ten, there would be two hundred 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:37.600 and seventy thousand additional predators on the streets committing violent 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.840 crimes at an unprecedented level. These children, he wrote, would 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:45.920 be radically impulsive, brutally remorseless, elementary school youngsters who packed 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:49.280 guns instead of lunches, and have absolutely no respect for 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:52.560 human life. So let's put them in a hole. See 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.760 if it gets better. I also love the idea that 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:56.960 they're packing guns instead of lunches because they do two 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.320 separate things. James, still you still, you still the eat 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:01.960 even if you're going to be shooting people, You want 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.080 to have a lunch. Yeah, like you don't. You don't 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.720 lose hunger pains just because you're packing a nine. You know, 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:13.520 I don't know, you might get hungry. So basically, everybody, 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.159 Republican and democratic like in the American political establishment, bought 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.639 into the idea of these child super predators to one 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:22.199 extent or another. And they also bought into the argument 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.600 delu Leo and Wilson made about what to do with 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.359 this upcoming crop of super predators. I'm gonna quote now 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:30.760 from the book The End of Policing, delu Leo and 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:32.880 his colleagues argued that there was nothing to be done 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:35.919 but to exclude such children from from children, from settings 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:38.639 where they could harm others, and ultimately to incarcerate them 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.440 for as long as possible. Delu Leo's ideas were based 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.920 on spurious evidence and ideologically motivated assumptions that turned out 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.119 to be totally inaccurate. Every year since, juvenile crime in 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.560 and out of schools in the US has declined. However, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.119 the super predator myth was extremely influential. It generated a 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.440 huge amount of press coverage, editorials, and legislative action. One 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:59.920 of the immediate consequences was a rash of new laws 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.480 lowering the age of adult criminal responsibility, making it easier 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.320 to incarceerate young people in adult jails, and keeping with 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:10.520 the broader politics of incapacitation and mass incarceration. So that's 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.120 good ship right there. We're all part of the problem 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:17.640 if we're clicking on that clickbait super predator bullshit. Yeah don't. 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.000 I mean, it was the nineties, so that was people 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:22.520 people knew less to be dag to be worried about 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.159 the clicks. But yeah, always be worried about the clicks. 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:32.960 Don't don't don't click Atlantic articles yeah, don't click Atlantic articles, 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:39.760 just just say no to the Atlantic. So by the 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:44.720 nineteen nineties, politicians realized that specifically fucking over children was 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:47.639 a really good vote getter. Um. Some elected leaders, like 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.760 the Republican Speaker of the House also fun children literally 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:55.919 because Dennis Hastard is a pedophile. Uh well, also advocating 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.920 for children to be treated as adults under criminal law. 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.000 And there's a really dark joke in that whole situation. Um, 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.000 but I I don't I'm not gonna I'm not gonna 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.119 make it. But there is one in there about Dennis 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:08.159 Hastard wanting kids to be treated as adults while he 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.600 molests a bunch of kids while being the longest serving 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.280 Republican Speaker of the House. Read about Dennis Hastert, it's 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:15.520 a real, real bad story. This is one of the 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:17.159 guys who like stood up there and talked about how 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.399 bad Bill Clinton was. It turns out he was a 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.480 child molester of the whole time. A lot of people 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.000 don't talk about Dennis Hastard enough anymore. Oh, first time 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.200 I'm hearing about him. Oh yeah, you didn't know about 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:29.800 the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House, who was 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:33.440 just the just a complete child molester the entire time 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:39.240 he was in office. But the first impression, it's so bad. Yeah, 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:41.240 he was just molesting the hell out of some kids. 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:47.359 It was really a problem. Um. Yeah, good stuff. You 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:49.480 want to take a break, buddy, Yeah, let's take an 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:52.800 ad break, Courtney. You know who won't be the longest 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.919 serving Republican Speaker of the House and use their power 0:20:56.160 --> 0:21:00.879 to assault children. Whoever this ad is for. That's exactly 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.360 the case, unless this is yet another one of our 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.360 ads for Dennis Haster, in which case I I do apologize. 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:08.200 We do not know how they keep getting in there. 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.640 We're back and we're talking about children being in cars rated. 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.480 So in the nineteen nineties, yeah, kids decide politicians decide that, 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:23.320 like really specifically going after kids as criminals is like 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.160 the thing to do. Um. So this is the political 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.840 situation in the US in nineteen nine when too Colorado 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.480 high school kids with an interest in Adolf Hitler walked 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:36.200 into Columbine High School and murdered thirteen people with firearms. Now, 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.840 there were armed police in Columbine that day, um, and 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.200 they failed to stop the rampage. But the kind of 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.480 folks who vote based solely on scary things that just happened, 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:47.480 did the thing that those kind of people do, and 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.040 they started voting to increase the presence of armed police 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.840 in schools. Politicians were happy to do this because given 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:54.800 the shocking number of civilian arms in the US and 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:57.200 are growing supply of angry young men, it seemed likely 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.119