Community Vitality Spotlight: Phillip Atiba Goff on Addressing the Systematic Adultification of Black Children

Through the Center for Policing Equity, Justice Collaboratory Member Phillip Atiba Goff is responding to the urgent need to redesign public safety systems and end the cycle of failures that steals children from their childhoods.

Emmett Till was only 14 years old when he was tortured and murdered by two White men in 1955. Nearly 70 years later, the recent signing into law of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was both welcome and long overdue, a powerful reminder that Black children have never been allowed the innocence of childhood in the United States. White supremacy's dehumanization of Black people has no age limits, extending an inherent suspicion to even those who should be free of any.

One result is that in interactions with the criminal legal system, Black children are held to the standard of adults with alarming frequency, experiencing far fewer protections than their White peers, and we are conditioned in the United States not to question it.

Racially differential treatment of children is an important yet underexplored arena. In the 2014 paper "The Essence of Innocence", Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff and his co-authors found evidence that Black children are seen as older and less innocent than their White same-age peers, and that a broadly shared association between Black people and apes predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward Black children.

The period of time when White children are not held fully responsible for their actions can extend well into their late 20s; by contrast, research shows that Black children are "adultified," seen as adults often by age 13—if not before.

The impact of this systemic dehumanization on Black children's interactions with the criminal legal system was recently underscored by two court findings. In March, an intermediate level appellate court for the state of Washington issued a published opinion acknowledging that “adultification is real and can lead to harsher sentences for children of color if care is not taken to consciously avoid biased outcomes.”

This follows a January ruling by the Connecticut Supreme Court (State v. Belcher) that the 1993 sentencing of then-14-year-old Keith Belcher to an effective 60 years' incarceration was imposed in an illegal manner because the sentencing judge had relied on the false and racist superpredator theory that posited primarily Black children as potentially “radically impulsive [and] brutally remorseless." The court found that the superpredator theory tapped into and amplified racist stereotypes and that the trial court’s reliance on the theory violated Mr. Belcher’s right to due process.

It’s heartening that some in the nation's criminal legal systems have begun to address this grievous reality, but the simple truth remains that the vast majority of Black children interacting with the nation's law enforcement and courts are met with dehumanization. The school-to-prison pipeline, itself a horrific expression of adultification, is frequently the reason these children find themselves in the criminal legal system in the first place.

Keith Belcher had to wait nearly 30 years for the Connecticut courts to acknowledge its grotesque sentencing of a 14-year-old boy. It is incumbent on all those working in our criminal legal systems to take every step to address the appalling injustice of systemic adultification of Black children, and the destruction these practices have wrought on generations of Black communities.

When Black children are held to the standard of adults the harm goes far beyond their own lives and that of their families, the trauma affecting the entire community. The moment may pass but the impact does not.

At the Center for Policing Equity, we are responding to the urgent need to redesign public safety systems and end the cycle of failures that steals children from their childhoods. All people—especially our youth—have the right to be seen and treated as children, and live in communities that are safe.

Learn more about this work at the Center for Policing Equity.

Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff