High Country Lockup

The summer of 1996 was an appropriate time for the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Project to examine conditions of confinement for children in Colorado's detention and corrections institutions. Several sensational crimes had created an alarming Asummer of violence in 1993. Public fear triggered a call by Governor Roy Romer for an Airon-fisted response to gang violence. In September of that year the Colorado State Legislature responded by passing harsher mandatory sentences. It lowered from sixteen to fourteen the age at which a child could be charged, tried and sentenced as an adult and established the Youthful Offender System as a second last chance for some children convicted as adults. Three years later, the legislature decreed that a twelve-year-old could be tried as an adult for certain offenses and, if convicted, held in a juvenile facility until he or she turned fourteen and then transferred to an adult prison. Because of their physical and mental immaturity, children should not be tried as adults in adult courts. Such courts deprive them of the protections and ancillary services available to them in juvenile courts. Children tried in adult courts are tried in public and deprived of their right to privacy. If convicted, they have criminal records that cannot be expunged and make securing work far more difficult on release. Moreover, they are subjected to higher penalties than would be the case in juvenile courts. And children should never be sentenced to adult institutions where they are mixed in with the adult population.