This book is a definite wake up call. Parents only find out the terrible reality when their own child gets caught up in the barbed web of the system, and they learn the hard way that their children really aren't under their protection. When prosecutors are given the right to prosecute any age child as an adult, as is the case in Florida, in essence, no child is safe and all children belong to the state instead of their parents.
Ever since a "tough-on-juvenile-crime" political response to a media-hyped juvenile crime wave in the early 90s, the United States Juvenile Justice System has increasingly become a nightmare for America's children. Children caught up in the justice system are no longer recognized as children, yet aren't afforded the rights granted adults. Florida leads the nation in belief that children should be locked away for life.
Society should never respond to children who have committed crimes as though they are somehow equal to adults, fully formed in conscience and fully aware of their actions. Placing children in adult jails is a sign of failure, not a solution. In many instances, such terrible behavior points to societies own negligence in raising children with a respect for life, providing a nurturing and loving environment, or addressing serious mental or emotional illnesses.
Scientific studies have proven that the adolescent brain is not fully formed. Therefore, children should not be held equally culpable as adults. The Legislature needs to come out of the dark ages and listen to experts on child psychiatry and scientific data on human growth and development.
The draconian laws of the past two decades need to be re-evaluated and changed. An easy first step to juvenile justice reform in Florida would be for the Legislature to remove juveniles tried as adults from mandatory sentencing schemes and restore to juvenile judges discretion of deciding whether a child is to be tried in juvenile or adult court, instead of letting prosecutors decide.
There should be defined lines of age distinction drawn between child and adult. If visual difference isn't enough to convince, logic and common sense should recognize that children aren't allowed to drive, sign contracts or vote among other things, because society doesn't believe they are mentally mature enough to do these things competently. Therefore, why is it that if a child commits a crime they are suddenly classified by the courts as an adult?
Any competent adult should know better.
Children are this county's most precious commodity, because they are our future. If a society is judged by how well it treats its most vulnerable, the past two decades of America's juvenile justice system will be recorded as barbaric.
Read this book and you will want to change the juvenile justice system. Laws can be changed, one vote at a time.
The accused killers were children: 12-year-old Alex King and his brother Derek, one year older, the two youngest defendants ever to stand trial for murder in Florida's history. The boys had already confessed to the brutal slaying of Terry King, their own father, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat on a November night on the outskirts of Pensacola. But in the course of the seemingly open-and-shut legal proceedings, a shadowy third player began to emerge. A convicted pedophile named Rick Chavis had befriended young Alex and was now, bizarrely, going to be tried separately for the same crime; a monstrous human predator who had seen two confused youths as perfect, easy prey.
The explosive case that riveted a nation is now the true crime book of the year -- a shocking, spellbinding account of innocence destroyed, blood spilled, and ... A Perversion of Justice.
