Public officials and the press have not adequately considered the consequences of prosecuting juveniles as adults, a practice that often disregards the potential for future development and exposes children to the inherent dangers of the adult detention system, said Bianca van Heydoorn, executive director of Philadelphia’s Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project.
Van Heydoorn told journalists at the Crime Coverage Summit hosted by the Radio Television Digital News Association and the National Press Foundation that news coverage identifying juveniles involved in such cases can expose them to unnecessary risk and lifelong notoriety.
“In Pennsylvania for several charges, a person as young as 15 years old can automatically be charged as an adult,” said van Heydoorn, a vocal opponent of the prosecution process known as “direct file.” “For other offenses like murder, that number goes down to 10 years old. So, if we can all indulge each other for a moment and pause and get an image of a 10-year-old in your mind … someone that young could be subject to moving through the adult criminal legal system, which means as far as the courts are concerned, they are treated exactly like an adult.”
Van Heydoorn, whose group works in part to transfer cases involving young offenders to the juvenile system to better care for their development and safety, urged journalists to take a fuller account of juveniles’ backgrounds in their coverage that could have lasting consequences long after they leave the criminal justice system.
“Because adult facilities are not set up to have young people living there, it means that young people are often in their room or in their cell 23, 24 hours a day because they have to be segregated from adults. And we know there’s all kinds of research about how solitary confinement is akin to torture,” she said.
Bianca van Heydoorn, Photo by: BP Miller/Chorus Photography
Van Heydoorn was joined for part of the session by Christina, a young client who was charged as an adult when she was 16 years old. RTDNA and NPF agreed not to fully identify Christina or photograph her because she remains under court supervision and to avoid putting her at future risk.
Christina described the experience of both incarceration and having her case publicized by the press as “really scary.”
“My face is on there, my name is on there, everything … so, it’s stuff that’s said about me that may not be true and it’s stuff that’s left out, like who I am as a person,” Christina said. “I feel like when reporters or news articles make news, they forget to identify the person that’s behind it. You forgot that I was also in school. I’m a sophomore. I’m a teenager. I’m not just this person that I was made to be on the news and it could be really dangerous because I could be targeted. It’s really scary just being on there as a child.”
Van Heydoorn encouraged journalists to think about the language they use in stories, such as “child” instead of “juvenile” and putting youth crime reports in the context of national, state and local trends.
“The key that we came here to talk about today is lifting up the humanity of every person and recognizing, especially if you’re under 18, that there’s a whole lot of growth that is still ahead of you and wanting to give young people the best shot that they have at achieving that growth,” she said.
Access the full transcript here.
The 2024 Crime Coverage Summits are sponsored by Arnold Ventures. NPF and RTDNA are solely responsible for the content.
