Despite having one of the most elaborate and sophisticated systems of jurisprudence in the world, Black leaders are alarmed by the increasing human rights violations of thousands of children detained in juvenile correctional facilities.

"Not only are children being housed in facilities along with adults, they are being subjected to practices which are known to have caused death among adults, such as hog-tying," said Nkechi Taifa, director of the Equal Justice Program at Howard University School of Law. She was referring to the controversial restraining technique that has caused "positional asphyxiation" in a number of suspects in police custody and prisoners in jail.

Atty. Taifa and others have good reason to be concerned, as documented in an Amnesty International report titled, "Betraying the Young." Of the most shocking findings in the report is that, in some cases, girls as young as 12-years-old have been subjected to rape and sexual abuse, and young males have been severely beaten and sprayed with chemical agents for minor infractions.

The report says children, some as young as 13-years-old, have been made to spend days, even months, in solitary confinement. At every stage of the justice system, according to Amnesty International, racial and ethnic minority children are present in numbers greatly out of proportion to their numbers in the community.

These practices are in clear violation of a number of treaties such as the International Children’s Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, Amnesty International contends.

"This report on juvenile justice is important in uncovering the many abuses our children face while ‘in the system,’ " said Nancy Bothne, director of the Chicago division of Amnesty International in a recent Final Call interview. "These practices must be stopped and Amnesty’s activists are calling for changes."

Though the United States has legally embraced and promoted these international standards as well as civil liberty standards of its own, the report says that U.S. authorities have failed to extend these safeguards to youth who are accused or convicted of violating criminal laws. In 1996, the most recent year for which data of this type is available, law enforcement agencies in the United States made about two million arrests of children accused of violating criminal laws. In thousands of cases all over the country, not only have authorities failed to protect the rights of many of these children, but, in some cases, simply refused to implement these safeguards, according to the authors.

And most egregious, the report says, U.S. authorities have increasingly prosecuted and punished children as if they were adults. Hence, local governments have amended juvenile justice laws to place a lower importance on rehabilitation and a greater importance on punishment and accountability.

"The problem with their strategy is that it has no rehabilitation, no kind of structure for young people, in terms of first time offenders, and other alternatives. Their attitude is that young people who commit crimes are hardened criminals," commented Ron Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association in Washington.

"We want the public to understand that people in our society who commit crimes can be punished for those behaviors, but we must ensure human rights for all," added Ms. Bothne.

Unfortunately, this concern has not resonated much with certain federal legislators; and child welfare and civil rights advocates are still relentlessly counteracting legislative initiatives that would further criminalize youth. A recent bill introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch, named the "Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act of 1999," would likely "disproportionately increase the number of children of color in the juvenile justice system" and "expose them to hardened criminals," said the NAACP in a critique of the bill.

The bill calls for a mandatory four-year jail sentence for gang members even if the juvenile has not committed any crime; would allow children and adults to be held in the same facility; and also allows states to ignore the problems of race discrimination in their juvenile detention centers. The bill may come to the Senate floor in mid-April.

"Senate Bill 254 is offensive to anyone of conscience and must be defeated," said Hillary O. Shelton of the National Public Policy and Federal Legislative Division for the NAACP, Washington Bureau.

In recent years, there have been reports from around the United States that staff in juvenile facilities have physically harmed and injured children in their care. The report states that children have been punched, kicked, shackled, sprayed with chemicals, and even jolted with electro-shock devices.

In South Carolina, for example, the state in 1997 decided not to renew a contract with the Corrections Corporation of America, a private company operating a juvenile facility, after receiving reports that staff had physically abused children there. According to reports, officers sprayed children with gas to enforce orders, punched, choked and kicked children and sometimes "hog-tied" them. One child reported that he was hog-tied on more than 30 occasions.

In Virginia, the Beaumont Youth Facility adopted a procedure called the "maximum restraint posture" where "the youth shall be placed on his stomach with his feet and hands shackled behind his back. His feet shall be secured to his wrists via a chain. A football helmet shall be fitted on his head. … After one-hour of non-resistance behavior, the youth shall be given the opportunity to be placed in a sitting position with all of the equipment remaining on him."

Physical abuse, however, is not the only form of cruel or inhumane punishment that has many child advocates concerned. Experts on child development also have expressed concern about the health risks of isolation. Research indicates that isolation can cause anxiety and other negative reactions and is associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior. Unfortunately, isolation has become a more increased method of punishment in the juvenile system.

In 1998, Amnesty International received reports that children in the state of Maine were so upset about the conditions of confinement that they cut themselves repeatedly in order to receive treatment and escape solitude. In one case, at a Maine Youth Center, a boy was in isolation for longer than 12 months. And in Kentucky, a municipal court found that children at a juvenile detention facility were kept in isolation for at least 16 hours a day.

The conditions that young girls are subjected to while detained are also quite disturbing. Custodial facilities do not provide females with the range and type of services that they may require because justice systems are mainly geared toward dealing with males.

One notable situation involved four female children in an Arizona facility, aged 16 and 17. They were the only females in that facility, and each was confined to a small cell containing just a bunk, toilet and sink, which afforded no privacy. Because they were the only females in the facility, they spent the entire day in their cells without any recreation whatsoever. In a separate case in Louisiana, the Department of Justice, again, found "a girl in an isolation cell with a bloody eyeball, caused when a guard hit her with keys. Her injury and its cause were confirmed by infirmary records. The child reported that she had been beaten for talking."

And, in some cases, young girls have been the victims of sexual assault. In Texas, the U.S. District Court heard a case where the plaintiff alleged that in a juvenile facility operated by the Wackenhut Corporation "…girls as young as twelve years old were subjected to sexual abuse, received no counseling, no vocational treatment, no case treatment plans or inadequate or inappropriate medical care. They were made to live in an environment in which offensive contact, deviate sexual intercourse and rape were rampant and where residents were physically injured to the point of being hospitalized with broken bones."

Experts also note that juvenile facilities across the country are seriously overcrowded and unable to provide adequate mental health and other important services that children need and to which they are entitled is also noteworthy. The most recent survey found that 40 percent of facilities around the United States housed more children than they were designed to accommodate, and the proportion has been increasing.

Furthermore, there are only 2.5 psychologists per 300 juveniles in general population, despite the fact that 40 percent of the juveniles received will be identified as having mental health or suicide watch needs.

"You’re talking about a situation that when they grow up out of that system, they’re going to be more apt to return to the criminal justice system as a result of the abuse they received early on," said attorney Taifa. "If, in fact, there had been other options that were actualized with respect to the social problems they were having, we might not be facing the type of epidemic that I’m sure we’re going to face in the future, and that we’re even facing right now."

(Askia Muhammad contributed to this article.)