African-American juveniles are more likely to be tried as adults if their alleged crimes are committed in St. Louis and St. Louis County. Jackson County, meanwhile, is "progressive" in its treatment of juvenile offenders, according to Judge Charles Atwell, who administered Jackson County's juvenile court until recently.
A report in the St. Louis Beacon, a nonprofit online publication, outlines the disparities in the state's juvenile justice system. In 2009, 64 percent of the juveniles who were prosecuted as adults were black.
Only a fraction of the juveniles who face criminal crimes are prosecuted as adults, according to Kenneth J. Cooper's report in the Beacon. The offenders who face big-boy charges tend to be black and live on the eastern side of the state.
St. Louis has sent the largest number of black juveniles into regular courts, where the felony charges against them can lead to imprisonment with adults, followed by St. Louis County. Together, those two judicial circuits with the largest black populations account for almost 70 percent of the 485 cases sent to adult courts during those nine years [from 2001 to 2009]. Jackson County, with a sizable black population in Kansas City, originated just 6 percent of the prosecutions.Judge Atwell tells the Beacon that Jackson County's two juvenile detention centers are doing a good job of rehabilitating young offenders and preventing them from becoming wards of the state or defendants in adult court.
Black youths are more likely to be tried as adults even though state law instructs judges to to be mindful of racial prejudice when they decide which path an under-18 offender is going to take. Judges in and around St. Louis may want to re-familiarize themselves with the statute.
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We here on the eastern side of the state are more than willing for you folks on the western side of the state to move the population of black young offenders to you and show us how you would handle the problems they have brought on themselves
I've noticed disparity in how the crimes are reported in the media as well. In the city, crimes are committed by an 18 year old man, while in the suburbs it's an 18 (or 19) year old teen. I also love when the television news (you don't see it so often in print) simply describes the offender as an "urban male".
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