Teens Guilty Of Hate Crime Get Unusual Sentence

Five teenagers this month pled guilty to vandalizing a historic African-American schoolhouse in Virginia with swastikas. But instead of time in juvenile detention, Alex Rueda, deputy commonwealth attorney for Loudon County, Va., asked that they be ordered to tour the U.S. Holocaust museum, and write monthly essays on books written by black, Jewish, and Afghan authors. “[T]hey are juveniles,” Rueda told NPR, “and the purpose of juvenile court, which is the court that they are in, No. 1, is rehabilitation. You really have to understand that the juvenile brain is very different from the adult brain. And juveniles don’t understand and appreciate the consequences of their actions.”