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Children threatened by abuse, neglect, violence, racial bias, and poverty are usually ignored-unless they do something violent.

In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults-they're more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can't get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities, but they're also more likely to change as they grow up. And so we pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.

But until recently, these legal protections didn't apply to children accused of committing violent crimes. Children were executed in the U.S. until 2005, and only in the last decade has the Supreme Court limited death-in-prison sentences for children. Kids as young as eight can still be charged as an adult, held in an adult jail, and sentenced to extreme sentences in an adult prison. EJI is working to protect children from abusive treatment in the adult criminal justice system.

The U.S. is the only country in the world where kids as young as 13 have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Before the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, 366 people were executed for juvenile offenses. That ban allowed EJI to focus on some 3000 people who were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses committed when they were 17 or younger. Children as young as 13 were among those condemned to die in prison.

Most of these sentences were mandatory-the sentencing judge was not allowed to consider the child's age or life history. Some children were sentenced for crimes where no one was killed or even injured, and many were convicted even though older teens or adults were primarily responsible for the crime. Seventy percent of those 14 or younger who were sentenced to die in prison were children of color.

EJI launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. Three years later, we argued in the Supreme Court that the Constitution forbids sentencing children to die in prison. On May 17, 2010, the Court in Graham v. Florida barred life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses. The Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults have to be considered in sentencing. Since 2010, we have successfully represented children across the country to obtain new sentences.

We went back to the Supreme Court after Graham to argue that sentencing kids to die in prison is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. In 2012, the Court in Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. The ruling affected thousands of people whose sentencers did not consider their age, the details of the offense, or any other mitigating factors. The Court did not ban all juvenile life-without-parole sentences, but held that requiring sentencers to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change" should make such sentences "uncommon."

Some states refused to apply to older cases. On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that applies retroactively and requires new sentencing hearings for everyone serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense when they were under 18. Montgomery reaffirmed that life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for all but the rare juvenile for whom rehabilitation is impossible.

Over a thousand people who were automatically condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses have been resentenced because of , and hundreds have been released.

The extremely low recidivism rate among those released after they were originally sentenced to die in prison underscores children's capacity for rehabilitation. One 2020 study found that only 1.14% of people released after being sentenced to life without parole as children in Philadelphia were re-convicted of any offense. And only one out of 142 people released in Michigan after Miller had been rearrested as of 2021.

Incarcerating children with adults needlessly puts kids at great risk of sexual and physical violence, increased trauma, and suicide.

4.5K

Some 4,500 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America.

36x

Children are 36 times more likely to die by suicide in an adult jail than in a juvenile detention facility.

100%

Every state in America has capacity to house juveniles separate from adults but many refuse to do so.

Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma. They often act impulsively, recklessly, and irresponsibly. In an adult jail or prison, this behavior results in more aggressive punishment-which can worsen a child's mental health problems.

Many kids who are transferred to adult court for criminal prosecution are automatically placed in adult jails and prisons. Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted. Thousands of young people have been assaulted, raped, and traumatized as a result.

Some statutes require "sight and sound" separation of children in adult facilities to shield them from physical and sexual violence. But in practice, this often means kids are put in solitary confinement, where they're at risk of significant psychological trauma from isolation.

The law protects children younger than 14 because their brains are still developing-they have less judgment, maturity, and knowledge than adults, and kids under 14 are even less responsible and more vulnerable than older teens. But when a young child is accused of a crime, these legal protections vanish, allowing kids under 14 to be prosecuted in adult court and sentenced to adult prison, even for life.

Kids' low social status compared to adult interrogators, beliefs about the need to obey authority, greater dependence on adults, and vulnerability to intimidation makes them uniquely susceptible to coercive psychological interrogation techniques designed for adults, leading to false confessions and undermining the reliability of the fact-finding process. Young children clearly can't defend themselves in adult court, but the rules created to shield adults who aren't "competent" to stand trial don't take kids' unique characteristics into account. Their diminished understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities puts them at great risk in the adult criminal justice system.

Eleven states have no minimum age for trying children as adults: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Some states allow children to be prosecuted as adults at 10, 12, or 13 years old. Children as young as eight have been prosecuted as adults.

Each year, judges transfer dozens of children under 14 to adult court. Prosecutors charge other young kids directly in adult court. More than half of the children under 14 transferred to adult court each year are African American or Latino.

Featured Work

EJI challenges abusive treatment of children by providing direct legal representation to hundreds of people across the country. We advocate for clients in parole hearings, provide re-entry services designed for people incarcerated as children, and educate policymakers, decision makers, and the public about the treatment of children in the justice system.

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Children in Adult Prison | Equal Justice Initiative

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EJI challenges abusive treatment of children in the adult criminal justice system.

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Criminal Justice Reform | Equal Justice Initiative

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EJI is working to end our misguided reliance on over-incarceration.

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Shackling pregnant women poses serious health risks to both mother and baby, but most incarcerated women in the U.S. are not protected from this dangerous practice.

The number of women in jails and prisons in the U.S. increased more than 750% between 1980 and 2017-a rate of growth twice as high as that of men. There are more than 225,000 women incarcerated today, and as the Guardian reports, only about 15% of them are in federal prisons where they are protected by the new federal prohibition on using restraints during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum recovery.

Medical experts say shackling poses safety risks that include "the potential for injury or placental abruption caused by falls, delayed progress of labor caused by impaired mobility, and delayed receipt of emergency care when corrections officers must remove shackles to allow for assessment or intervention."

Restraining women in transport to prenatal care and during labor and delivery can obstruct necessary medical care and, during labor, lead to extreme physical pain and complications because of the mother's inability to move freely, according to a 2017 report from the American Psychological Association. Physicians have reported not being able to administer epidurals due to restraints, and in one documented case, a woman restrained during labor experienced a hip dislocation that caused permanent deformities and pain, stomach muscle tears, and an umbilical hernia.

Women subjected to restraint during childbirth also report severe mental distress, depression, anguish, and trauma, the APA reports. Shackling during or immediately following childbirth can cause or exacerbate pregnancy-related mental health problems, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Women who get locked up, tend on average to have suffered many more childhood traumas," psychiatrist Terry Kupers, MD, told the Guardian. Being shackled can increase post-traumatic symptoms caused by prior experiences of trauma. This re-traumatizing experience, he said, "makes conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder much worse."

Despite strong evidence of danger to the mother and child, the Guardian reports that 23 states do not have laws against shackling incarcerated pregnant women, even though the majority of women are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. This practice disproportionately affects Black women, who are almost twice as likely to be incarcerated as white women.

No accurate data exists about pregnancies and childbirth among incarcerated women and adolescents because the federal government does not require state prisons or county jails to collect it. In 2018, the majority of women serving in Congress introduced a bill that would require collection of this data, but no action was taken on the bill.

A 2019 study suggests that pregnant incarcerated women are shackled far more often than not. The study found that 83% of perinatal nurses who cared for incarcerated women during pregnancy or the postpartum period reported that shackles were used on their patients sometimes to all of the time, and 12.3% reported that their patients were always shackled.

In a third of cases, the only reason cited for shackling was adherence to a rule or protocol.

"We dehumanize this group of women to such an extent that we don't see how wrong this is-just how unnecessary and cruel it is," Lorie Goshin, associate professor at Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing in New York and the lead investigator of the study, told the Guardian.

The study found that shackling violates personal dignity when it's unnecessary, and it's unnecessary in all but the most exceptional circumstances because a "woman's ability to harm others or flee is physically limited during pregnancy and labor, and corrections officers accompany incarcerated women in hospital settings."

While corrections officials often assert that unrestrained incarcerated women pose flight and/or public safety risks, the APA found there is no record of escape for any incarcerated woman who was not restrained during labor.

"The process of labor and childbirth can already be scary for many women," Nicole Bennett, who gave birth while shackled in April 2012, said in support of the Pregnant Women in Custody Act of 2018. "But to have to go through it while shackled and handcuffed makes it even more terrifying and is detrimental to both mom and baby."

"Incarcerated women have made mistakes," she continued, "but no woman, no matter what she's done, should have to endure childbirth while shackled, and neither should her child."

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Shackling of Pregnant Women in Jails and Prisons Continues in the United States

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Shackling pregnant women poses serious health risks to both mother and baby, but most incarcerated women in the U.S. are not protected from this dangerous practice. The number of women in jails and prisons in the U.S. increased more than 750% between 1980 and 2017-a rate of growth twice as high as that of men.

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The year was 1944.

Recy Taylor was walking home from a church meeting in Abbeville, Alabama with two other churchgoers when she was terrorized by seven white men in a green Chevrolet truck, snatched by them, taken to a secluded area and assaulted and raped, being told to "act like you do, with your husband or I'll cut your damn throat." (as told by Recy Taylor in McGuire, 2010) According to McGuire (2010), the NAACP sent their best investigator, Rosa Parks, to what was her father's hometown to explore what happened. Her efforts resulted in the formation of the Committee for Equal Justice, which later became known as the Montgomery Improvement Association. In fact, "the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, often heralded as the opening scene of the civil rights movement, was in many ways the last act of a decades-long struggle to protect [B]lack women, like Taylor, from sexualized violence and rape." (McGuire, 2010; digital location 186). The social movement widely described as the Civil Rights Movement, emerged out of black women demanding control over their bodies and lives, black men being killed for protecting black women, or ultimately, the fight for black women's bodies and agency and against white supremacist rape and assault.

Eight decades later, black women still need protection from sexual violence, despite the Civil Rights Movement. According to the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community (PDF, 772KB):

For every black woman who reports rape, at least 15 black women do not report.

One in four black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18.

One in five black women are survivors of rape.

Thirty-five percent of black women experienced some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetime.

Forty to sixty percent of black women report being subjected to coercive sexual contact by age 18.

Seventeen percent of black women experienced sexual violence other than rape by an intimate partner during their lifetime.

The Institute for Women's Policy Research reports that:

More than 20 percent of black women are raped during their lifetimes - a higher share than among women overall.

Black women were two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than their white counterparts. And, more than 9 in 10 black female victims knew their killers.

Black women also experience significantly higher rates of psychological abuse - including humiliation, insults, name-calling and coercive control - than do women over all.

The struggle to protect black girls and women remains. Unfortunately, black women remain vulnerable to sexual violence due to what we call intersectionality, the systematic oppression black women experience based upon their race and gender. These institutionalized practices and policies prevent their equitable enforcement. Because of what is known as the "Strong Black Woman" archetype (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009), the dangerous single story told about black women that uplifts their strength, perseverance and survival and minimizes their emotional well-being, tenderness and humanity, black women are rarely protected. In fact, black women are rarely protected while:

Playing video games with their nephew - Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, a 28-year-old black American woman, was shot and killed in her home by a white American police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, while she played video games with her nephew #SayHerName.

Hanging out with friends at a park - Rekia Boyd was shot in the back of the head and killed by Dante Servin, an off-duty Chicago detective.

Knocking on a door to seek help after a car crash - Renisha McBride walked to a neighborhood in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, where she knocked on the door of a house owned by Theodore Wafer who shot her with a shotgun suspecting a break-in #SayHerName.

Being served a warrant and holding a toddler - Korryn Gaines was shot and killed while holding her son by a SWAT team in Baltimore County, Maryland, where they were serving her a warrant for a traffic violation #SayHerName.

Giving birth to a child - Kira Johnson experienced severe medical negligence during her routine C-section causing massive internal bleeding and her eventual death in Los Angeles, California #BlackMamasMatter (PDF, 569KB), representing the high rate of maternal mortality among black women, where black mothers in the U.S. die at three to four times the rate of white mothers.

Sitting on the floor with their child in a crowded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program office - Jazmine Headley's one year old was violently separated from their child by four police officers and arrested by police because of her encounter with a security guard and not having a place to sit.

Drinking milk from a school cafeteria - An eleven year old girl with special needs was body slammed by a cop simply for taking milk from the cafeteria.

Unfortunately, so many more experiences of violence affecting black women with disabilities, queer and trans black women, as well as lesbian and bisexual black women.

While not directly related to sexual violence, these stories are emblematic of the daily bias and institutionalized gendered racism black women experience when dealing with various systems such as criminal justice, education and health care. Age or vulnerability doesn't protect us either. Many people are working hard to change these inequities by developing effective policies and practices. We already have policies to address sexual violence such as the Violence Against Women Act, but partisan politics are currently preventing its reauthorization. What we don't have is a critical mass willing to enforce these policies, center black women in the narrative, and act. But change can start with you. Here's what you can do:

Become an informed ally. Learn more about the relationship between colonialism and sexual violence. Consider reading more books by black women scholars who are writing about the daily lived experiences of black women, including sexual violence. #CiteBlackWomen is a good start.

Center black women in your advocacy. Contact your elected officials and share this data. Ask them what they are doing specifically to improve the sexual violence experienced by black women. It may be helpful to explain how institutions contribute to gendered racism. Ask them to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

Support organizations that work on behalf of black women in your area. This may require you doing some research, talking with black women and allowing them to tell you what they need.

Black women should not be the forgotten survivors of sexual violence. The year is 2020. Maybe this will start another movement that will result in sustainable change for black women experiencing sexual violence.

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Black women, the forgotten survivors of sexual assault

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The year was 1944. Recy Taylor was walking home from a church meeting in Abbeville, Alabama with two other churchgoers when she was terrorized by seven white men in a green Chevrolet truck, snatched by them, taken to a secluded area and assaulted and raped, being told to "act like you do, with your husband or I'll cut your damn throat."

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STAUNTON - A jury deliberated for about two hours Thursday in Staunton Circuit Court before acquitting a Philadelphia man who had been accused of sexually assaulting a young girl nearly two years ago.

Angel L. Vega Padua, 49, went to trial after being charged with aggravated sexual battery.

Last year, police extradited Padua from Puerto Rico, where he has family, and he was jailed for several months while awaiting trial.

Padua was accused of fondling a young Staunton girl at a friend's home on the city's east side in November 2020.

The girl, who is under the age of 10, took the stand last week during the first day of the two-day trial and testified she was playing hide-and-seek with Padua on the day in question and hiding behind a chair when he found her.

However, the girl testified that Padua allegedly tried to touch her but said he never made contact with her genitalia. The girl said it began with tickling, but said he began moving his hand up her leg, according to her testimony.

Her romper, which had a small hole to begin with, was ripped during the incident when Padua grabbed her clothing and pulled her toward him, she testified.

"He started touching me again in the same way," the girl said.

Following her testimony, on the next day of the two-day trial, Staunton Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Joseph Perry amended the aggravated sexual battery charge to attempted aggravated sexual battery.

A truck driver by trade, Padua was jailed in May 2021 on the initial charge of aggravated sexual battery. Following his acquittal, Linda Czyzyk of the Staunton Public Defender's Office said Padua was relieved.

"It's just been hard sitting in jail for eight months for something that he's been adamant he didn't do," Czyzyk said.

Padua was released from Middle River Regional Jail on Thursday following the jury's not guilty verdict.

He did not take the stand during the trial.
More: More: To subscribe, visit www.newsleader.com and click "subscribe" at top of page. Brad Zinn is the cops, courts and breaking news reporter at The News Leader. Have a news tip? Or something that needs investigating? You can email reporter Brad Zinn (he/him) at bzinn@newsleader.com. You can also follow him on Twitter. Outdoor downtown dining; Farmers markets starting; Staunton awards - The buzz Black men targeted by police, citizens in a panicked Virginia town as intruder assaults fifth woman

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Philly man jailed for 8 months found not guilty of sexually assaulting Staunton girl

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STAUNTON - A jury deliberated for about two hours Thursday in Staunton Circuit Court before acquitting a Philadelphia man who had been accused of sexually assaulting a young girl nearly two years ago. Angel L. Vega Padua, 49, went to trial after being charged with aggravated sexual battery.

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Effects of solitary confinement on mental and physical health

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Solitary confinement is associated with significant increases in anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and physical health conditions, such as vision loss. Learn more here.

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The Center also produces groundbreaking reports on various issues related to the death penalty such as arbitrariness, costs, innocence, and race.

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Words From Prison: Sexual Abuse in Prison

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Dorothy was convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to life in prison after enduring years of severe mental and physical abuse throughout their marriage. Growing up, Dorothy had never

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Death Penalty | Equal Justice Initiative

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The death penalty in America is a failed, expensive policy, defined by bias and error.