A Kid Accused of a Crime Is Still a Kid

New York Magazine, August 2, 2022: A Kid Accused of a Crime Is Still a Kid

“When NYPD cops talk about the people they arrest, one often hears ugly slang like perps, mutts, psychos, and skels (a reference to the skeletonlike appearance of people addicted to drugs). It is a depressing exercise in dehumanization.

“New York’s current public discussion about crime and public safety is only slightly more elevated. People arrested on suspicion of committing street crimes — arrested, mind you, not convicted — are often lumped together and portrayed as a kind of permanent, despised caste whose errant members should swiftly be ‘taken off the street’ and jailed immediately, with guilt assumed and an actual trial treated as a distraction.

“Mayor Eric Adams often slips into this language and mentality in what sounds like a holdover from his decades in the NYPD. ‘As soon as we catch them, the system releases them, and they repeat the action. When I say we’re the laughingstock of the country, this is what I’m talking about,’ Adams said last week after bystander videos showed a wild scuffle between a pair of 16-year-olds and a team of cops at the 125th Street Lexington Avenue subway stop, allegedly for jumping the turnstile.

“‘How do we keep our city safe when the other parts of the criminal-justice system, they have abandoned our public-safety apparatus?’ the mayor said. ‘We need to look at violent offenders, and this is a clear case of that.’

“Nowhere in the mayor’s comments was an acknowledgment that a 16-year-old — even an out-of-control 16-year-old charged with serious crimes — is not just a ‘violent offender’ but a child and that Rikers Island may be the worst possible place to send him.”

Additional reading:

Bloomberg, August 3, 2022: Adams Denies Focus on Crime Is Fueling Perception NYC Is Unsafe

The New York Times, July 15, 2022: Eric Adams Can’t Stop Talking About Crime. There Are Risks to That.