NCJ Number
183622
Date Published
2000
Length
13 pages
Annotation
The issue of youth crime and violence has risen in the Nation's consciousness due to the recent wave of gun-related fatalities committed in schools by young people, and some individuals advocate the use of capital punishment as a means of social redress for juvenile violence.
Abstract
The United States has the highest number of juveniles on death row in the world and has executed the largest number of juvenile offenders. All 70 young people currently under sentence of death are male. The typical child sent to death row is a 17-year-old black or Hispanic boy whose victim was a white adult. Nonetheless, international human rights instruments prohibit the death penalty for juveniles, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Historical aspects of the use of the death penalty against children in the United States are reviewed, as well as U.S. domestic law on the execution of juvenile offenders and ways of reducing youth violence. The author concludes that abolition of the death penalty for children in the United States is long overdue and that the emphasis instead should be on finding viable solutions to violent youth crime. 36 notes