From Rapists to Superpredators: what the practice of capital punishment says about race, rights and the American child

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century's end. This paper suggests that the United States' loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile off enders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in the international system had ended the practice: the politics of American federalism and a system of racial subordination that excluded some juvenile off enders from the umbrella of child protection measures, a conclusion suggesting that racial prejudice has interfered with U.S. compliance with international norms of child welfare and juvenile justice.

Critical Criminology and Race: Re‐examining the Whiteness of US Criminological Thought

“…The way that we study and write about political violence, interpersonal victimisation, policing, sexual assault, capital punishment, etc., carries existential importance to lives and livelihoods. For example, understandings of super‐predators (Allen and Whitt 2020; Linde 2011), the MAOA gene (Wells et al . 2017; Williams 2013, p.720), the morbid and racist scientific politics of positional asphyxia versus excited delirium (Jouvenal 2015; National Public Radio 2021a); the conflation of gang violence with Latino migrants (Barak, León and Maguire 2020) are all influenced by what criminologists do, say and write – and what we fail to do, say and write (see Belknap 2015, p.12).…”

What is Left in the “Too Hard Basket”? Developments and Challenges for the Rights of Children in Conflict with the Law

“…international journal of children's rights 28 (2020) Scholarship in this area has rightly identified how punitive sentences contravene children's rights (O'Brien and Fitz-Gibbon, 2016). Capital punishment (Linde, 2011;James and Cecil, 2003-4). However, there is less discussion of what a children's rights approach to such cases involve.…”

“…Children's rights are now an established academic discipline, albeit 'complex, dynamic, and relatively young' (Kilkelly and Liefaard, 2019a) with the study of children in conflict with the law being a fundamental area of analysis. For example, a survey of articles published since the inception of this journal yields a wide variety of criminal justice-related topics, ranging from participation of children in court proceedings (Rap, 2016) to capital punishment (Linde, 2011;James andCecil, 2003-2004;James, 2001). Jurisdiction-specific analyses are prevalent, with Canada (e.g.…”

The globalization of childhood: The international diffusion of norms and law against the child death penalty

“…In the US case, the combination of two mechanisms of diffusion — principled activism and the globalization of childhood — is attributable to the United States’ unique history of child protection efforts. Under the leadership of child advocates, the United States became a laboratory for the development of norms of child protection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the area of juvenile justice, before losing ground as the 20th century progressed (Linde, 2011). The pattern of US diffusion then came full circle, with a new generation of domestic activists emerging late in the 20th century to pressure the United States to comply with the international norm against the child death penalty.…”