For how long will this nation continue to send children to jail without providing them a counsel to defend themselves?

It is often said that one can judge the true nature of democracy in a nation by the nation's treatment of its most vulnerable members.

The treatment of children by American courts in juvenile and criminal proceedings shows that America has a long way to go towards the true democracy.

Only in 2005, 10 years ago, did the U.S. stop executing children.

Only 3 years ago did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that children may not be sentenced to life without parole as a mandatory sentence, that such sentencing would be a violation of the 8th Amendment.

Nonetheless, according to ACLU, 2,570 individuals convicted as children and sentenced for life without parole, remain sentenced.  Apparently, in the U.S. Supreme Court's "wisdom", the court's pronouncements of what is or is not a violation of the U.S. Constitution enacted in the 18th century does not have a "retroactive effect", a completely illogical concept.

The abysmal treatment by the American judicial system practice is also demonstrated by the pattern and practice of incarcerating juveniles without the benefit of counsel that continues to be a dreadful reality in many states.

The practice caught national attention when a judge in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, was exposed and ultimately charged for racketeering in a scheme of receiving kickbacks from private actors who built a juvenile jail and needed to fill it in order to receive money from the county.  The judge, for kickbacks, filled that jail with children who the judge sentenced to deprivation of their liberty without the benefit of counsel.

Yet, what the former judge Ciavarella practiced for kickbacks, ruining lives of 2000 children in the process, is practiced throughout the country, and I do not see much of the media attention to that problem.

In Ohio, as of 2004, 15% of children committed with the Ohio Department of Youth Services (juvenile facilities) and 20% placed with the community corrections facilities (adult jails) were unrepresented by counsel.

Detention of juveniles after court proceedings without legal representation was reported in Tennessee in 2014.  Please, note that Tennessee continued what enraged the nation in the Pennsylvania "Kids for Cash" scandal long after exposure in Pennsylvania and, apparently, in defiance of established constitutional precedent of nearly half a century that is described below.

In New Jersey, the child's right to legal representation in the juvenile proceeding is reportedly linked to the income of the child's parent or law guardian, which is, in my view, unconstitutional, because a child himself or herself have no income, and should be entitled to public defender anyway.

A parent's duty of supporting a child does not extend to paying for a lawyer in juvenile proceedings, and parents may have significant conflicts of interests in such proceedings and may be actually the people who reported the child and triggered the proceedings, so they would definitely not be interested to pay for the child's lawyer.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court blundered in the precedent on point, In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967) by conditioning the child's right to counsel on parents' income, even though it found that a child has a constitutional right to counsel in proceedings that may result in deprivation of liberty.

Yet, at the very least, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, among other things, that "the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court", In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967).

Apparently, for many courts across this nation, being a youth still justifies a kangaroo court, and I do not see any significant movement from state bar associations to change that.