Lucky Severson reports on the moral questions that arise when adult justice is imposed on juveniles.
LUCKY SEVERSON: This is Jeremy Armstrong, growing up in the Wisconsin State Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison for adults. Jeremy was 16 when he arrived here.
JEREMY
ARMSTRONG: There is no way to describe it. You come here
and there are a thousand grown men. I mean, they are three
times your size. You know, it is just indescribable. SEVERSON (to Armstrong): Did they say things to you?
ARMSTRONG: "You going to be a bitch."
SEVERSON: You must have been very scared?
ARMSTRONG: The fear, it is more than fear. It is like humiliation, shame. You just want to die. That's what I wanted to do. I just wanted to slit my wrist and die.
SEVERSON: When he was 15, Jeremy shot and killed a man during an attempted robbery. Even though a juvenile, he was sentenced as an adult to 20 years in prison for reckless homicide.
Milwaukee District Attorney Micheal McCann says Jeremy Armstrong was tried as an adult, because as a juvenile he would have only been locked up for three years. And even as an adult, he will be eligible for parole in five.
MICHAEL McCANN (District Attorney, Milwaukee, WI): I think it is terribly tragic. I do think he is a young man with fine potential. But to say that five to seven years is excessive, I think is unreasonable. You're not going to be living next door to him.
SEVERSON: Robin Swellows is Jeremy Armstrong's attorney.
ROBIN SWELLOWS (Attorney): In many, many instances, I have seen the prosecutors and the judiciary take pleasure in putting kids in adult prison. There is something that says "Aha! They are far, far away from us and to hell with them."
SEVERSON: Jeremy Armstrong was a good student, almost straight A's, and by all accounts, a good kid.
ARMSTRONG: School was great. It was like my release.
SWELLOWS: He went to school to escape and he worked hard, hard, hard at school and when he got home his world had fallen apart.
SEVERSON: At home, his mom was hooked on prescription drugs, but Jeremy was very close to his dad.
ARMSTRONG: We went fishing. We went to Canada. He coached my little league team when I was in high school. Some guys had a best friend to hang out with. That was my dad.
SEVERSON: Then his father got in an accident, lost his job, and got hooked on crack.
ARMSTRONG: We didn't have electricity. We didn't have food. I just needed the money.
SEVERSON: So he held up his father's crack dealer. They struggled, and Jeremy shot the man.
ARMSTRONG: Bad isn't the word. I did the worst thing a human being can do.
McCANN: If you are over ten in the state of Wisconsin and commit first degree intentional homicide, or are charged with that, it must start in the adult court.
SEVERSON:
But when does a child or an adolescent become an adult? When
are they old enough to understand what they've done -- to
understand the charges against them? Vincent Schiraldi is president of the Justice Policy Institute.
VINCENT SCHIRALDI (President, Justice Policy Institute): A 13 or 14 year-old isn't responsible for their behavior the same way a 30 year old is. That's why we don't let them drive. That's why they can't get married. That's why they can't vote and that's why they can't drink alcoholic beverages. Why all of a sudden, when they commit an irresponsible act, they are as culpable and able to understand ramifications of that as an adult is?
SEVERSON: Last year, 200,000 juveniles in the U.S. were adjudicated as adults, a number that has been increasing every year since the mid 1990s.
Ken Hodges is the District Attorney in Dougherty County, Georgia.
KEN HODGES (District Attorney, Georgia): We've had a decrease in juvenile violent crime since 1997. I don't know that I could attribute it directly to Senate Bill 440 and the prosecution of juveniles as adults, but I think that it has had an impact.
SEVERSON: The Georgia legislature made it mandatory that kids be tried as adults if they commit specified violent crimes. No exceptions.
Take the case of Dantavious Lowe, put in Georgia's adult prison at Alto for armed robbery when he was 15.
SEVERSON:
Despite the harsh environment of an adult prison, Dantavious
has earned his high school equivalency and started reading
the bible and attending church services. If Dantavious had
been tried as a juvenile, he could have been sentenced to
a boot camp and subjected to military style discipline, or
a juvenile detention center that focuses on rehabilitation.
But over the past 20 years, funding for adult prison rehabilitation
programs has dwindled to a trickle. 
SEVERSON:
The public perception is that juvenile violent crime is rampant
-- that high schools have become shooting galleries. In Florida,
a 12 year-old guns down a popular teacher -- in Arkansas,
two young boys target practice with their classmates. These
are high-profile tragedies, but they do not appear to be part
of a trend. 
