The Child at Risk: The Case for the Youthful Offender

Abstract

Several years ago in a conversation among young people in jail, a boy of seventeen recounted a chilling tale of murder. Late on a hot, still, Friday evening in the middle of summer, a large group of kids had gathered at a basketball court not far from the local middle school. Most of the kids knew each other, but there were some there who were “outsiders,” as it were. Suddenly, without any warning, this seventeen-year-old boy pulls a gun and fires two bullets into the head of a twelve-year-old whose name he does not know.

“I was just standing there, talking to my friends, figuring out what we were going do that night, right, when I see this kid, kind of over my shoulder, you know, and I notice he's standing on my shadow. There's this long black shadow, you know, you couldn't miss it, everybody could see it, and he's standing on it. So I tell him, ‘Would you mind getting off my shadow.‘ The kid doesn't move. I don't know if he doesn't hear or he hears me and he doesn't care. So I tell him again, loud, ‘Would you get off my shadow.’ This time he's just looking at me, but he still doesn't move. Third time. ‘Hey, man, get off my shadow.’ The kid just looks at me. So, I did it. I warned him three times, right, and I shot him.”