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Extending adult penalties to kids bad idea, panel told
RACHEL O'NEAL
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Lowering the age at which children may be tried as an adult and establishing sentencing that could land them in adult prisons are "political grandstanding" that won't reduce the number of crimes by minors, two juvenile justice experts said Wednesday.
They gave their views to the Governor's Working Group on Juvenile Justice, which was assembled by Gov. Mike Huckabee after a March 24 shooting by two young boys killed five people and wounded 10 others at a school near Jonesboro.
"The only justification for lowering the age in which young people should be transferred to adult courts is retribution with perhaps a little political grandstanding thrown in for good measure," said Laurence Steinberg of Philadelphia.
The working group is expected to make recommendations to the governor next month regarding changes that may be made in the state's juvenile laws in the legislative session that will start in January.
In Arkansas, children as young as 14 can be tried in Circuit Court for a few serious crimes, and younger children can't be tried as adults at all.
Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice in Chicago, said trying younger children as adults likely will turn them into career criminals.
Steinberg and Jerome Miller of Alexandria, Va., founder of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, said studies show that violence by minors is not increasing. Both said crimes like the shootings at Westside Middle School are rare.
The killers were 11 and 13 at the time of the schoolyard shootings and were tried in juvenile court.
In Arkansas, minors judged delinquent for major crimes generally don't stay in state custody past their 18th birthdays. But the law allows them to remain in the state custody until age 21.
The group also is discussing blended sentencing, which would allow a child to be moved into the adult system if he violated his sentence, committed another crime, or has not been rehabilitated.
Steinberg warned against a knee-jerk reaction in dealing with juvenile crime. He said states should be putting more emphasis on rehabilitation rather than adult incarceration.
"It doesn't mean we should ignore events like the Jonesboro tragedy," Steinberg said. "It does mean these rare events need to be put in proper perspective."
"Making huge changes in our laws in response to a small number of extensively publicized incidents is letting a very small tail wag a very large dog," Steinberg said. "Outrage is an understandable emotion, but it is not a good backdrop against which to make sensible public policy."
Miller, who headed the state youth systems in Massachusetts in 1969-73; Illinois in 1973-76; and Pennsylvania in 1976-79, said crimes committed by children are not on the rise.
Citing studies conducted by the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and Valparaiso University in Indiana, Miller said minors are committing about as many crimes per year as they did 25 years ago.
And the number of school shooting deaths has dropped from 55 in the 1992-93 school year to 40 deaths in the 1997-98 school year, he said.
Miller said the news media have created "artificial crime waves" through intensive coverage of the Jonesboro shootings as well as school shootings in Springfield, Ore., Pearl, Miss., and Paducah, Ky.
"Although the tragedies in Jonesboro, Kentucky and Oregon are horrendous, they are not necessarily indicative of a trend," Miller said.
Steinberg said lowering the age a child may be tried as an adult "will accomplish virtually nothing" because children are "rarely aware" of the law and are not worried about the consequences of committing a crime.
Steinberg said placing children in adult prisons would "make matters worse." He contended that those children are more likely to commit crime again than a child treated at a juvenile detention facility. And he said children who are placed in adult prisons do not receive the education and job skills they will need when they are released.
Instead, Steinberg recommended lengthening the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system to 25 years of age. He said by extending the punishment, children will have a longer for rehabilitation.
Miller said states should move away from large state-run juvenile justice facilities to smaller treatment facilities operated by nonprofit groups.
In Massachusetts, Miller said, he shut down a large juvenile institution and contracted with private groups which established small, 10-bed facilities. In smaller facilities, the minors have more day-to-day interaction.
And he said most minors, especially serious offenders, need intensive counseling.

This article was published on Thursday, August 20, 1998

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