The issue of charging juveniles—generally defined as people under 18—as adults if they commit serious felonies has become heated, especially in San Francisco, where voters fired Chesa Boudin for being soft on crime, and Mayor Breed hired Brooke Jenkins to replace him.
Boudin had refused to seek adult charges for juveniles, which infuriated San Franciscans, who know that a 14-year old misfit can be just as vicious and dangerous as a 40-year old killer. Jenkins, by contrast, has not ruled it out. “It is quite likely that I never will [charge juveniles as adults] while I am District Attorney...(but) there may be extremely egregious and heinous cases where that charge may be appropriate.”
I think this makes sense to most of us. If you were assaulted violently by a criminal, or if a loved one of yours was murdered, would you really care how old the criminal was? If the criminal had a long record of repeated offenses, would you be swayed by arguments—such as those put forth by the San Francisco Chronicle—that juveniles “lack the ability to understand a trial in adult court”? If I were the victim, I would be offended by such a contention. I abide by the old dictum, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
And yet we have the social justice warriors who have decided that it’s unfair to prosecute a juvenile no matter how heinous his crime may be; that instead, these young people need love, compassion and understanding, in order to be rehabilitated back into society. Well, I’m not buying it. Brooke Jenkins is absolutely right: there are some instances where juveniles behave so horribly, so animalistically that they have to be isolated from society, for as long as it takes for a Court to determine they’re fit to be released. This doesn’t mean stuffing our jails with teenagers. But it does mean finding a sane balance between the Boudin position—no adult charges at all—and a 100% lockup for juveniles. The public has perceived, correctly, that our criminal justice system has gotten out of balance, with too much “understanding” advanced toward criminals and not enough toward victims. That same public has demonstrated, over and over, that it wants this imbalance to be corrected. And it is being corrected.
Readers know that I’m opposed to Pamela Price’s candidacy for District Attorney of Alameda County. One reason why is because Price agrees with the Boudin philosophy of allowing juvenile criminals off the hook when it comes to hard time. Her campaign website promises she will “stop charging and/or incarcerating youths under the age of 18 as adults.” And Price doesn’t stop there: indeed, she would “establish age-appropriate programs to address criminal violations by youths between 18 and 25.” In other words, Price has effectively redefined “juvenile” to include adults up to the age of 25. If that doesn’t alarm and sicken you, what does?
The Oakland Police Department has warned us that there has been “an uptick of juveniles committing armed robberies and carjackings…underage suspects as young as 11 years old have held victims at gunpoint to take their vehicles.” In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, criminals up to the age of 24 accounted for between one-third and one-quarter of all murders, robberies, aggravated assaults and motor vehicle thefts in the U.S. Yet here is Pamela Price, urging that these criminals not be charged as adults, but sent to “age-appropriate programs.”
That is crazy. It’s reprehensible. It’s dangerous. And it’s wrong.
Steve Heimoff