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The New York Times
The Case for Juvenile
Courts
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web. August 14, 2008
This country made a terrible mistake
when it began routinely trying youthful offenders as adults. This
get-tough approach was supposed to deter crime. But a growing number of
government-financed studies have shown that minors prosecuted as adults commit
more crimes — and are more likely to become career criminals — than ones
processed through juvenile courts.
The value of specialized courts for young people is underscored in a new report
from the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention. After evaluating the available research, it concludes that
transferring juveniles for trial and sentencing to an adult criminal court has
increased recidivism, especially among violent offenders, and has led many young
people to a permanent life of crime.
The juvenile justice system was one of the great reforms of the Progressive Era.
The push to go back to trying children as adults began in the mid-1990s, when
state lawmakers fixated on a few, high-profile crimes by young people and —
convinced there was a youth crime wave — came up with a politically convenient
solution.
Young people who commit serious, violent crimes deserve severe punishment.
But reflexively transferring juvenile offenders — many of whom are accused of
nonviolent crimes — into the adult system is not making anyone safer. When
they are locked up with adults, young people learn criminal behaviors.
They are also deprived of the counseling and family support that they would
likely get in the juvenile system, which is more focused on rehabilitation.
And once they are released, their felony convictions make it hard for them to
find a job and rebuild their lives.
Nearly every state now has laws that encourage prosecutors to try minors as
adults. The recent studies of this approach should lead legislatures to
abandon these counterproductive policies.
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