Pastors Speak Out Against Hardening Juvenile Justice System

Southern Christian Coalition says legislation will harm young people and not reduce crime

A group of Tennessee pastors affiliated with the Southern Christian Coalition is speaking out in opposition to legislation that will treat some minors as young as 14 as adults in the state's court system.

HB 1029 would require 17-year-olds to be tried as a adults and would allow children as young as 14 to be tried in adult court for certain crimes.

"This bill does nothing to prevent violent crime or to address the factors that lead to violent crime, and the bill contains no provisions for rehabilitation," said Rev. Dr. Donna Whitney, Pastoral Assistant at Metropolitan Interdenominational Church of Nashville. "Instead, it dumps disturbed young people into environments that are designed for adults. If anything, policy like this would contribute to more and more violent crime by ensuring that young offenders are incarcerated in conditions that only exacerbate the emotional and psychological troubles that lead them into crime in the first place. 

Whitney added that the trial and sentencing of minors as adults is developmentally inappropriate.

"As a retired neurologist I know that the adolescent brain is not an adult brain. Human brains don’t reach full adult development until the early 20s. In particular, those parts of the brain that support impulse control and that respond to the threat of adverse consequences remain incompletely developed during the teen years. Thus the threat of severe punishment is not an effective deterrent to adolescent crime. And as a Christian pastor I believe that Jesus calls us to restorative systems of justice and not punitive justice, as God is always calling us to offer and receive mercy and grace following repentance. Hardening criminal punishments for minors is not based on sound neuroscience, Christian ethics, or sensible public policy, but rather on vindictive political grandstanding that accomplishes nothing."

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