Adolescence: Netflix Takes a Big Swing with Mini-Series about Children in the Criminal Legal System
(Heads up – this blog contains spoilers of the series.)
The top show currently trending on Netflix is Adolescence, a British crime drama mini-series centered around 13-year-old Jamie who is arrested for the murder of a classmate. This program is truly like nothing I have ever seen. It starts with a shocking, cortisol-rush inducing scene of police breaking down the door to a home in an English town, ordering the family to get on the floor, and searching until they find Jamie, a slight boy in bed with a teddy bear. With guns aimed directly at him, they order him out of the house and place him under arrest to the horror and confusion of his parents and sister.
While the series takes place in England and not the United States, so many of the realities of the justice system are the same. I work to shine light on these in my role as Director of Communications at Juvenile Law Center, so I had been awaiting this program. The first scene and episode alone is a masterpiece, taking the viewer on a front seat journey to witness a child’s arrest. We can feel the parents’ powerlessness; we share in the sister’s heartbreak – we see how terrifying it is for a child to interact with police.
While the series begins with open questions about whether the child is responsible for the murder, that is not the focus of the first episode. It focuses instead on the trauma a family experiences when their loved one – barely just a teenager – is swept into the system, and they are forced to learn on the fly how to navigate the process.
While Jamie and his family are white and English – not representative of many of the Black and Brown children we fight for in the system in the United States – so many issues this series raises are universal. What is the culpability of a child, even one who causes great harm? What is the appropriate response to a child by a justice system? What could society’s role be in this child’s life?
The series also flagged key differences in our systems. Most of the adults who interacted with Jamie were supportive in their tone and actions. At no point in his detention do we witness or learn of Jamie experiencing physical abuse, which we know American children – again, predominantly Black and Brown children – often do. He was not held in solitary, pepper sprayed, or shackled. Jamie did experience the humiliation of a strip search as children in the United States do, which we know is inappropriate and harmful.
In our work, we address what makes kids different from adults and why that matters for law and policy. We know from neuroscience and developmental science that adolescents’ brains are developing, they are more prone to impulsivity, they are vulnerable to peer pressure, and they are also uniquely capable of change and rehabilitation. Adolescence touches on developing teenage minds. The series takes us through the social world of school that informed Jamie’s life and development and underscores the dangers of allowing the internet and social media to shape your son’s life as he nears such a time in his development. As the mother of a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy myself, it was gut-wrenching to watch. It was also profound and incited several conversations with my husband. My deep hope is it will also trigger broad conversations about how our legal system responds to the unique pressures on teenagers today.
One of our Stoneleigh Youth Advocacy Fellows, Bree Hood, often says, “Imagine that this was your child,” when speaking about children in the juvenile and criminal legal systems. This critical series truly helps the viewer do just that. It is an extraordinary cultural contribution; I hope that audiences take the feelings and lessons shared by this British cast and crew – who apparently shot these miraculous episodes all in one breathtaking take, defying the laws of television as we know it – and apply them to the children we place in harmful systems in the United States.
It is a challenging and gripping watch. I recommend it.
