One third of children in the United States were born out of wedlock, and half
of the children live in single-parent families. At present, four million U.S.
children live with jobless parents, facing such problems as domestic violence,
melancholia, and drug and alcoholic addiction.
American juveniles often fall victim to violent crimes. More and more
students go to school with knives or other weapons. In 2005, the number of
students found with knives and other weapons in Maryland schools was 2,845, a
jump of 63 percent over the past five years. Virginia schools also reported
2,278 cases of confiscated weapons in 2003 to 2004. And Washington D.C. reported
148 weapon incidents from 2004 to 2005.
The Washington Post reported in a feature story in August 2005 that a survey
of 325 Latino seventh- and eighth-graders from across Montgomery County
discovered 12 percent of the 11-to-13-year-olds had carried a weapon such as a
knife or a club (one percent had carried a gun); 38 percent had gotten into a
physical fight; 27 percent had stayed home because they felt unsafe going
outside; and 16 percent had been threatened or injured by someone with a weapon.
Twenty percent had been involved in gang-related activities; 12 percent said
they had been members of a gang.
Frequent on-campus violence incidents threatened the safety of 26.4 million
U.S. students aged between 12 and 16. Statistics showed 12 juveniles died of
firearm-related crime everyday in the United States. A report by The Los Angeles
Times on March 4, 2005 said more than 70 percent of sixth-graders in Los Angeles
had experienced or witnessed violence incidents, and this proportion reached as
high as 90 percent in some areas.
The U.S. judicial protection for children's rights is far lower than
international practice. A report released by the U.S. Department of Justice
showed the number of juveniles behind bars in the United States reached 102,000
by the end of 2004. The United States is one of the few countries where a crime
committed by a juvenile results in a life sentence without any possibility of
parole. According to a Human Rights Watch report, 93 percent of youth offenders
serving life without parole were convicted of murder, and an estimated 26
percent were convicted of "felony murder." This means that anyone involved in
the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty
of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death.
About 9,700 inmates were serving life sentences for crimes they committed before
they turned 18. At least 2,225 child offenders are serving life without parole
sentences in U.S prisons,compared with a combined total of 12 in other
countries; 16 percent of the child offenders were between 13 and 15 years old
atthe time they committed their crimes, and an estimated 59 percent were
sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. At
present, the number of child offenders serving life without parole sentences in
the United States is three times of 15 years before. Child offenders often
experienced abuse in prisons, and staff-on-inmate sexual assaults at
correctional institutions for juveniles were almost 10 times more than in jails
for adult offenders. The United States is one of the few countries that sentence
child offenders to death. To date, sixstates in America still have no minimum
age for death sentence.
In 2004, a total of 63 juveniles aged 17 or under were sentenced to death. At
present, there are around 3,500 prisoners on death row in the United States,
with 72 of them sentenced for crimes they committed before they turned 18.
