A generation after America decided to get tough on kids who commit crimes -- sometimes locking them up for life -- the tide may be turning.
States are rethinking and, in some cases, retooling juvenile-sentencing laws. They're responding to new research on the adolescent brain, and to 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, in contrast to the turbulent days of the 1990s when politicians vied to pass laws to get violent kids off the streets. Now, some champion community programs for young offenders to replace punitive measures they say went too far.
"There has been a huge sea change. . . . It's across the country," says Laurie Garduque, program director at the MacArthur Foundation, which has worked extensively on juvenile-justice reform. "It certainly helps that there has been a decline in juvenile crime and delinquency."
Not everyone, though, believes there's reason to roll back harsher penalties adopted in the 1990s.
"The laws that were changed were appropriate and necessary," Minnesota prosecutor James Backstrom says. "We need to focus on the protecting the public -- that's No. 1. Then we can address the needs of the juvenile offenders."
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Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Herring thinks the tougher standards that Virginia set in the 1990s work well. They mean many youths, some as young as 14, are tried as adults for violent felonies such as murder, aggravated assault or robbery.
"We're seeing more juvenile robberies," Herring said. "They're kind of the poster child of this dilemma. . . . When they come out of the adult system in their 20s or 30s, they're going to be hardened, really likely to be seasoned, more likely to be predatory.
"On the other hand, if you've got a juvenile who pulls a gun in a robbery, what kind of message are you sending to his peers, what kind of message are we sending to him if we don't take it very seriously?"
Herring said he believes most prosecutors in Virginia have little doubt that a 17or 18-year-old who is not under duress, not retarded, not under the influence of drugs or alcohol ought to be tried as an adult if charged with a violent felony. He is less sure about that when a 14-year-old is accused.
"I don't care what you say, 14-year-old minds are different," he said.
But older teens who know what they are doing when they kill or try to kill, or who rob or rape, should be tried as adults, most Virginians feel, Herring said.
"But I don't think you'll find anyone who doesn't feel a nonviolent, nonpredatory offender should have more community options," he said.
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Reginald Dwayne Betts knows firsthand about being a teenager in an adult correctional facility. He spent more than eight years behind bars in Virginia for an armed carjacking. An honors student who had never been in trouble with the police, he says he expected he might be sent to a juvenile detention center or even receive a suspended sentence.
Instead, he was tried as an adult. When he was originally sentenced to 23 years, he says, he didn't know the difference between the terms "consecutive" and "concurrent."
Locked up at 16, Betts spent most of his time in adult prisons.
"Of course it makes a difference if you're 15, 16 or 17," he says. "You're not prepared to deal with it physically or emotionally. You're trying to deal with being away from home. You're trying to deal with the stress that comes with being in prison."
Violence was a constant presence. "I got used to stuff most people I see today would never have to get used to -- like somebody getting their head split open," Betts says. "You get numb to it. It's like, OK, somebody got stabbed."
After serious problems during his first two years in prison, he retreated into books, taught himself Spanish, took a paralegal course, wrote and published poetry.
When he was released two years ago at age 24, he won a college scholarship, found work and started a book club for young boys. He is now engaged and has a book contract. He knows he is an exception: "People don't come out of prison and make good," he says.
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Each year, about 200,000 defendants under 18 are sent directly or transferred to the adult system, according to rough estimates.
Most end up there because of state laws that automatically define them as adults, because of their age or offense. Those laws were ushered in to curb an explosion in violent crime -- the teen murder arrest rate doubled from 1987 to 1993 as the crack trade and guns flourished -- and to address mounting frustrations with the juvenile-justice system.
Some politicians began using the phrase "adult crime, adult time." There were predictions of even bleaker days ahead.
Some warned that by the end of the century, thousands of remorseless kids -- a new generation of superpredators -- would be committing murder, rape or robbery, joining gangs and dealing drugs.
But the supervicious breed of criminal never emerged. (The professor who coined the "superpredator" term later expressed regret.) Drug trafficking declined. An improved economy produced more jobs. And the rate of juvenile violent-crime arrests plummeted 46 percent from 1994 to 2005, according to federal figures.
The MacArthur Foundation said in a report to be released this month that about half the states are involved in juvenile-justice reforms -- among them, taking more kids out of the adult system, providing more mental-health and community-based services and improving conditions at detention centers.
A national poll, commissioned by MacArthur and the Center for Children's Law and Policy and set for release at the same time, also found widespread public support for rehabilitating teens rather than locking them up.
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Advocates for children's rights in Virginia are pushing for one key change -- the automatic way a prosecutor's request to try juveniles as adults for serious felonies is granted, said Melissa Goemann, director of the Mid Atlantic Juvenile Defenders Center at the University of Richmond.
Goemann said advocates hope the General Assembly will consider allowing an adult-court judge to consider sending a case back to juvenile judge. About half the states have some form of judicial review of a prosecutor's motion in such cases, she said.
The change would not affect the automatic transfer of murder and aggravated malicious wounding cases to adult court, she said.
"There aren't enough alternative programs available" for juveniles guilty of less serious offenses, Goemann said. Wealthier communities tend to have more options, while in rural Virginia there are few alternatives to detention.
Some Virginia communities are experimenting with promising options such as Roanoke's teen courts -- in which minor offenses at schools are handled by courts run by youth themselves -- or Richmond's juvenile drug court, she said. She said child-rights advocates would like to see more such programs in Virginia.
But not all states are easing up.
Rhode Island headed in the opposite direction -- at least, temporarily. Last summer, the state passed a law to send 17-year-old criminal offenders to adult prisons in what was intended as a cost-cutting move. The measure, however, was repealed about four months later after some critics pointed out the plan probably would be more expensive.
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Though juvenile crime tends to evoke images of gangs and murder, violent teens are the exception.
Studies find that they account for about 5 percent of all juvenile arrests. Drugs, burglary, theft and other property crimes are among the more common reasons teens are prosecuted in adult courts.
Most of these kids, though, don't end up in adult prison, according to the Campaign for Youth Justice. A study the group commissioned of 40 large court jurisdictions in the country looked at teen felony cases in 1998 and found between a third and a half had no conviction or were bounced back to juvenile court.
Crossing the threshold into the adult world is damaging in itself, argues Liz Ryan, head of the group. About 7,500 juveniles are held in adult jails on any given day, she says, and that number probably reaches tens of thousands a year because of turnover.
For those eventually convicted of serious crimes in adult court, the damage can be irreparable, compared with convictions in juvenile court, where records typically are sealed.
"A lot of people say, 'So what? They get a slap on the wrist,'" Ryan says. "Well, there is a consequence. We call it perpetual punishment. You have a felony record that follows you the rest of your life."
Ryan says that can affect college loans and admissions, voting and job prospects. "By cutting off opportunity, it increases the likelihood they'll be back in the justice system," she says.
The Associated Press and Richmond Times-Dispatch staff writer David Ress contributed to this report.
