Stoneleigh Fellow and Inquirer Journalist Samantha Melamed has published the second part of her ongoing series covering the current state of youth justice in Philadelphia.
This article is part of an ongoing series about juvenile justice. Read part one here.
The case involved a gun — or, at least, that’s what it said in the police report. No shots were fired. No bullets were found. The gun itself was never located. And the weapon seemed to evolve over time, sometimes appearing in reports as a Glock, in other accounts resembling a starter pistol.
But the mere allegation of pointing the gun was important. It meant that when a girl called the police after an altercation in her Germantown home with her 15-year-old cousin Anwar and his friend Ahmad, the two teenage boys were charged as adults with aggravated assault and other felonies.
Instead of being processed in juvenile court — with a menu of options including diversion and juvenile probation — they faced criminal trials and up to 20 years in state prison.
