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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I disagree with you OP. I think treating juvenile offenders as adults in DC has led to a sense of nihilism among a lot of young people in DC. They sense (correctly) that the city does not care about them or what happens to them, so they embrace criminal activity because they don't see the point in following rules that are designed to protect everyone BUT them and their communities.

Many juvenile criminal offenders in DC have spent their entire lives in a city that sends them to substandard schools, neglects their neighborhoods, and focuses all the city's economic growth on wealthy, mostly white, college graduates. And then they wind up in adult prisons because of drug and gang activity they engage in as teenagers. It really is a school to prison pipeline and we are treating these kids as though they never had a shot at a different kind of life. Keeping them out of adult jails and prison populations is a small but important step to interrupting that pipeline.

Do you really think punishing juvenile offenders more severely is going to have a deterrent effect for young people in this city growing up with poor educational and career options? All it does is expose them to more violent, adult prison populations at a younger age. That doesn't help.[/quote]

As a city, we tell our children in many ways that we don't care about them.  We tell our adults that, too.  Take street cleaning as one example - Connecticut Avenue looks nice because we have BIDs and Main Streets and Clean Teams working to keep it clean.  We've privatized, semi-privatized, or placed behind the wall of Bowser's coterie some basic city services.  If you don't have money, influence, kiss ass, or somehow organize your neighborhood, you will see quite a bit of trash.   [/quote]

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