States rethink tough juvenile laws

A generation after America decided to get tough on kids who commit crimes – sometimes locking them up for life – the tide might be turning.

States are rethinking and, in some cases, retooling juvenile sentencing laws. They’re responding to new research on the adolescent brain, and studies that indicate teens sent to adult court end up worse off than those who are not: They get in trouble more often, they do it faster and the offenses are more serious.

“It’s really the trifecta of bad criminal justice policy,” says Shay Bilchik, a former Florida prosecutor who heads the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University. “People didn’t know that at the time the changes were made. Now we do, and we have to learn from it.”

Juvenile crime is down – including in Pierce County where criminal filings have fallen 18 percent in the past five years – in contrast to the turbulent 1990s when politicians vied to pass laws to get violent kids off the streets.

Now, in calmer times, some champion community programs for young offenders to replace punitive measures they say went too far.

“The net was thrown too broadly,” says Howard Snyder, director of systems research at the National Center for Juvenile Justice. “When you make these general laws … a lot of people believe they made it too easy for kids to go into the adult system and it’s not a good place to be.”

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