Trying juveniles as adults fails, U.S. study finds

11-29-2007 Arizona:

A decade after a nationwide push to toughen sentences for juvenile offenders, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has released a study stating it is a mistake to send underage criminals into the adult court system.

According to the study, youths who have been previously tried as adults are 34 percent more likely to commit crimes than those who are dealt with in the juvenile system.

In addition, youths transferred into the adult system commit suicide at higher rates than those kept in the juvenile system and are victimized by other inmates far more as well.

Judge Patricia Escher, who presides over Pima County's Juvenile Court, said the study corroborates other studies done in recent years.

"There's a reason why juvenile courts were created," Escher said. "Children are not little adults. They are physically, neurologically and behaviorally different than adults and it's been proven the way we deal with adult offenders is not particularly helpful when dealing with juvenile offenders."

Arizona's legislators have already started to realize that judges need to be given back some of the discretion they lost in the mid-1990s, Escher said.

For example, they passed a bill last session that allows judges to send certain juvenile sex offenders back into the juvenile system, Escher said.

Hopefully, legislators will look at the CDC study and review other statutes to see if the state is taking the best approach it can, Escher said.

Legislators pushed for harsher punishments for juveniles in the 1990s because of an increase in juvenile crime. In addition, experts were warning citizens and police alike to get ready for a national wave of unprecedented crime that would be carried out by "super-predators" — violent teenagers with no conscience who lived for the moment and would commit crimes for the pleasure of it.

The super-predators never arrived and juvenile crime has actually decreased in recent years.

In Pima County, for example, the number of children charged with violent or property crimes fell 43 percent between 1997 and 2006. At the same time, the number of children between ages 8 and 17 living in Pima County rose 26 percent.

Leah Hamilton, supervisor of the county public defender's juvenile unit, said she, too, hopes legislators will review juvenile-crime statutes after reading the most recent study.

Locally, however, Hamilton said she has to give kudos to the Pima County Attorney's Office.

Prosecutors are quite judicious when seeking transfers into the adult system, Hamilton said.

They realize that "fundamentally kids and adults are two different species," Hamilton said.

In Arizona, juveniles can land in the adult system one of three ways.

They can commit a crime that requires them to be treated as adults, they can commit a crime that requires a prosecutor to seek a judge's approval for an adult transfer or they can commit a crime that allow the prosecutor to transfer them into the adult system without a judge's approval.

According to Pima County statistics, the number of children being remanded into adult court has dropped significantly since 2000.

In 2000, 134 children were remanded into adult court.

In 2006, that number was 93.

Peter Hochuli, supervisor of the Pima County Attorney's Office juvenile division, said fewer juvenile offenders are being transferred into the adult system because more services are available for them in the juvenile system.

"If we can provide rehabilitation, the community is going to be safer in the long run," Hochuli said.

One of the things he looks at when deciding whether to seek a transfer to adult court is the age of the child.

If a child accused of a less serious sex crime is 17 years, 6 months old, a treatment program may not help him much simply because he won't be able to finish it, Hochuli said. A 15-year-old accused of the same crime might benefit greatly from the same treatment program, though.

"We take our responsibilities very seriously," Hochuli said. "We are very careful about who we determine should be transferred into adult court."

Hochuli also said it was important to note that while the CDC study says juveniles are often victimized in adult facilities, that isn't the case in Pima County.
In Pima County, juveniles transferred into adult court are separated by "sight and sound" from adult prisoners, Hochuli said.

"If we can provide rehabilitation, the community is going to be safer in the long run." Peter Hochuli, Supervisor of the Pima County Attorney's Office juvenile division ..more.. by Kim Smith at 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com.