The Incarceration of Children

Across the United States, children are being arrested due to childish misdemeanors, impacting them for the rest of their life. Adolescents even under the age of ten who are not fully developed and bound to make mistakes are being excessively punished. Evidence by the FBI dictates that between 2013 and 2018, more than 30,000 children under the age of ten were arrested in the United States. One specific incident involves 6 year old Kaia Rolle, a African American girl who was arrested at school in Orlando, Florida in 2019. Kaia was handcuffed, restrained and taken into custody on account of throwing a tantrum and kicking a staff member at school. Video surveillance shows Kaia crying and pleading with the officer not to handcuff her. The reason for Kaia’s meltdown was due to her struggle with sleep apnea which causes temper tantrums. The officer was fired; however, Kaia is left with PTSD and anxiety many years later. Other incidents include a 7-year-old boy who was handcuffed for refusing to go to the principal's office and a 10-year-old boy with Autism was handcuffed and held to the ground by the neck due to his “unsafe behavior”. 

In fact, the reason behind the multitude of children’s arrests is due to the fact that many states do not have any age limit in terms of prosecuting juveniles. According to government data, 34 states have no minimum age for detention and the rest mostly have the age set at 10. In order to stop more interventions with children, proper and detailed police training is necessary. Currently, police officers are not equipped to deal with children. The Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrates that only a portion of the police are given a short training on how to handle disciplinary encounters with juveniles, around a couple hours. More evidence indicates that children of color and disabilities are at much higher risk to be arrested. They recieve harsher and longer punishments for the same offenses. After their arrest, children are too young and unknowledgeable to defend themselves in a courtroom. Being called a criminal and delinquent impacts their records and their self esteem, sending them on the wrong trajectory. The trauma of being handcuffed and detained is one that a child cannot recover from, and increases the chance of heading down a similar path again in the future.