Juvenile law should be reconsidered

Like many states, in the mid-1990s Virginia toughened its laws on when juvenile suspects could be tried as adults, mandating that some crimes automatically be transferred to adult court and giving prosecutors authority to determine whether other cases should be transferred.

It was a move this newspaper supported.

Now a new report takes issue with both the fairness and efficacy of those changes. The report makes some compelling arguments that should be considered. We’ll focus on just one, which seems to us the most convincing.

A primary argument in the ‘90s for expanding the options for sending juveniles to adult court was that it was necessary in order to keep violent offenders off the streets. The goal not only was to punish, but also to prevent the most serious of crimes. The fear was that juveniles who committed such heinous acts as rape and homicide could be returned to society unrepentant after a tour through the more lenient juvenile system.

We still believe that a strong response is needed for these most terrible of crimes.

But data compiled since the mid-’90s show that juvenile transfer is not being used for the most serious of crimes, but rather for a wide range of non-violent crimes. This is not what we intended in endorsing expanded juvenile transfer options.

The report from the JustChildren Program (which is associated with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, Richmond and Petersburg) says that an overwhelming majority of young people sent to adult court have been charged with lesser offenses. According to data cited from the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, only 6 percent of cases sent to adult court from 2001 to 2008 were homicide cases; another 8 percent were sexual assault cases.
By comparison, nearly half of all transfer cases consisted of robbery (33 percent) or non-sexual assault charges (15 percent).

Now, assault is certainly a crime that requires a stern response, but — unless it rises to the level of attempted murder — it is not the kind of crime we anticipated being sent to adult court on a regular basis.

The report also looks at the problem from the perspective of the judge who adjudicates these cases, rather than the prosecutor who advances them to adult court. The report notes that more than half of the juveniles sent to adult court were not even sentenced to adult prison. The implication: The court did not consider their crimes serious, raising the question of whether they should have been sent to adult court in the first place.

The report also makes other noteworthy points, such as the fact that young people tried in the adult system often do not get age-appropriate counseling or mental health assistance that might prevent recidivism.

You can look at the report by going to http://dontthrowawaythekey.wordpress.com/ and clicking on the link.

Let the debate begin.