One of Congress's most crucial tasks will be to strengthen and update
the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. Passed in 1974, the
law required the states to move away from the practice of locking up
truants and runaways -- and to refrain from placing children in adult
jails -- in exchange for federal grant dollars.
Congress's goal then was to move the states away from failed policies
that often turned young delinquents into hardened criminals and toward a
framework based more on mentoring and rehabilitation. But the states
have increasingly classified ever larger numbers of young offenders as
adults, trying them in adult courts and holding them in adult prisons.
The damage wrought by these policies is vividly outlined in a federally
backed study issued this spring. It reports that children handled in
adult courts and confined in adult jails committed more violent crime
than children processed through the traditional juvenile justice system.
Other studies show that as many as half of the juvenile offenders sent
to adult courts were not convicted there -- or were sent back to the
juvenile system, but often after spending time in adult lockups. Equally
disturbing is the fact that youths of color are more likely to be sent
to adult prisons than their white counterparts.
Reauthorization hearings begin today and members need to listen closely
to what the experts are saying. Trying children as adults -- except in
isolated cases involving extreme violence -- is both inhumane and
counterproductive.