In May 2014, two twelve year-old girls were charged with attempted homicide in Wisconsin. Image Credit: Newsweek.
Recently, stories of violent crimes committed by juveniles, particularly girls, have featured widely in Chinese media. Stories include the case of a 14 year old girl in Yunnan who was charged with homicide in cooperation with her much older boyfriend and a 12 year old in Hunan who is suspected of having fatally poisoned two other primary school girls. Dui Hua’s 2014 Women in Prison symposium also features research exploring violent crimes committed by juvenile girls in Beijing courts. It found that the percentage of violent crimes committed by juvenile girls has been increasing over the past several years.
The US is also dealing with the issue of violent crimes committed by juveniles 15 and under, with perhaps the most famous case being the “Slender Man” incident in Wisconsin, in which two 12-year-old female defendants stabbed a classmate repeatedly and were charged with attempted homicide. Because these cases are highly complex, this article conducts in-depth case studies comparing different state approaches to high profile felonies committed by juveniles 15 and younger, similar to the Slender Man case. Two case studies involve female juvenile defendants, and two involve males. Chinese officials considering policy reforms aimed at curbing violence among very young juveniles might draw important lessons from these state-level US cases.
Putting the Case Studies in Perspective
To better understand these case studies on violent juvenile crime, this section provides a survey of each state’s rate of juvenile confinement. State juvenile policy works best when the lowest possible proportion of the juvenile population is confined in a detention facility.
Understanding each state’s juvenile confinement rate will then allow for the selection of state-level case studies that reflect the variation in juvenile justice policy across the United States. Using the map below, we hope to identify what conditions are operating in states that do a good job of keeping juveniles out of adult prisons.
The data and maps used in this article come from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), which collects comprehensive data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The following map is based on the most recent available data from 2013. [1]
In the map above, it appears that in general, lower confinement rates are found in the Northeast and in some states in the South. (The raw data for 2013 can be found here.)
State-Level Case Studies of Violent Crimes Committed by Young Juveniles
Based on this map of juvenile confinement rates, case studies were selected from different states to get a sense of the variations in juvenile justice performance across the country. The case studies focus on violent crimes committed by juveniles in four states: Massachusetts, Wisconsin, California, and South Dakota, each with varying juvenile confinement rates. Massachusetts has a “low” confinement rate, Wisconsin has a “mid-low” rate, California has a “mid-high” rate, and South Dakota has a “high” rate.
This case selection is intended to gain a better understanding of the spectrum of regional variations in juvenile justice performance across the US, even though the cases themselves likely represent a small number of recent violent juvenile crimes committed in the US.
Massachusetts: Low Confinement Rate (46-109.5 per 100,000 juveniles)
Facts: Fifteen year-old Mathew Borges is accused of stabbing Viloria Paulino, his Lawrence High School classmate on November 18, 2016, decapitating him and mutilating his body.
Laws and Policies: Massachusetts has one way that juveniles can be prosecuted as adults: “Statutory exclusion: [adult court original jurisdiction is] mandatory for youth 14 and older charged with first-degree or second-degree murder. Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 119, § 72B.”
Defendants Waived Into Adult Court? The defendant was automatically processed in adult court based on the severity of the charges: “Borges will be arraigned in Lawrence District Court…as an adult on a count of first degree murder.”
Wisconsin: Mid-Low Confinement Rate (109.5-173 per 100,000)
Facts: In May 2014, two 12-year-old girls stabbed another girl of the same age 19 times to impress the fictional “Slender Man” horror character; the case has received extensive media attention and the trial is now pending in adult court.
Laws and Policies: In the “Slender Man” case, the adult court assumed mandatory “original jurisdiction” over the case, even though the defendants were 12 years-old, because under Wis. Stat. Sec. 938.183(1), “adult courts have exclusive original jurisdiction over first degree intentional homicide, attempted first degree intentional homicide, first degree reckless homicide, second degree intentional homicide.” According to the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, “Wisconsin’s lowest age of automatic adult court jurisdiction (age 10) is the lowest in the nation,” and “Wisconsin is one of only 7 states remaining in which youth under 18 are automatically considered adults.” For less serious offenses, Wisconsin youth ages 15 and 16 can still be waived into adult court for any delinquent offense, and for a few serious offenses youth as young as 14 may be waived. Wis. Stat. Sec. 938.18(1).
Defendants Waived Into Adult Court? The defendants were automatically placed into adult court, as mandated by law, and appealed their placement in adult court. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the placement of defendants in adult court, and denied a related motion for “reverse waiver” that would have placed defendants back in juvenile court: “Wisconsin law requires children as young as 10 to be charged as adults for the most serious crimes, but allows them to seek transfer back to juvenile court, as was recently tried, unsuccessfully, by the two 12-year-old Waukesha girls charged with trying to kill a sixth grade classmate last year to please Slender Man.”
1. OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book. “The information in this table is based on the state where the offense was committed. However, the state of offense is not always reported. Youth for whom state of offense was unknown are included in U.S. totals (3,401 in 1997). These instances are not evenly distributed across states. As such, users should exercise caution when examining state-level trends or comparing states. Visit the EZACJRP methods section for more information. U.S. total excludes youth in tribal facilities. The residential placement rate is the number of juvenile offenders in residential placement per 100,000 juveniles age 10 through the upper age of original juvenile court jurisdiction in each state. To preserve the privacy of the juvenile residents, state cell counts have been rounded to the nearest multiple of three. Detail may not add to total because of rounding. Rates and percentages presented are also based on rounded totals. More information on this rounding rule is available on the EZACJRP Web site.” Return to article
