Community Safety: Time to Rethink Our Approach to Juvenile Sentencing

On Tuesday, an article in

The Times-Dispatch discussed a new report released by the JustChildren Program entitled Don't Throw Away the Key: Rethinking Adult Time for Juvenile KIM
O'DONNELL
Crime in Virginia. The report, an exploration of the effects of laws enacted in the mid-'90s that transformed the process by which juveniles could be tried as adults, calls on policymakers to re-evaluate these laws in light of new research that reveals that the changes were overly broad, unnecessarily punitive, and enacted in anticipation of events that never occurred. Having served in the City of Richmond for nearly 22 years as a prosecutor, defense attorney, and, finally, as a juvenile court judge, I agree it is time to rethink our approach to this critical issue of community safety.

Prior to the changes made in the '90s, juvenile court judges were the primary players vested with the power to decide which youth were tried as adults and which remained within the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. Judges made decisions after full consideration of a broad range of factors including the nature and seriousness of the offense, the age and maturity of the offender, and the safety needs of the victim and community. In short, these decisions were made by neutral fact-finders with considerable training, who considered all factors relevant to the decision at hand. I was a prosecutor during this time and was always able to persuade a judge to transfer a violent youth when I thought it was required.

However, changes to the law all but removed juvenile court judges from this important decision-making process and entrusted them, instead, to local prosecutors without the same training and experience who were not obligated to consider anything other than the age of the offender and the nature of the charge. Restoring authority over these decisions to judges is the first recommendation of JustChildren's report and is supported by every professional group, except prosecutors, working within the juvenile justice system.

Why should it matter who we entrust to make these decisions? Because getting this decision right matters, and a wrong decision has serious consequences for us all.

After more than a decade of operating under these new laws, we now know that youth who are treated as adults are more likely to reoffend than those who are maintained within the juvenile justice system. We also know they are at greater risk of physical and sexual assault from older offenders and that they do not have access to the same educational, vocational, or rehabilitative services as their counterparts who are maintained within the juvenile justice system.

And, if we thought the adult system was reserved for only those youth deserving the harshest punishment, we now know it is not. Consider this from the JustChildren report: Almost a quarter of the youth convicted in adult court required only a sentence of probation and less than half were sent to adult prisons. Yet many received adult felony convictions.

Cut off from opportunities for education, job training, and treatment available in the juvenile system, saddled with felony records, and at increased risk for victimization and abuse, these young offenders return to our communities as convicted felons with huge deficits -- deficits that make it nearly impossible for them to get a job or support themselves. Is it any wonder that many return to a life of crime?

Our laws should reserve this severe consequence only for those who deserve it -- and the net should be narrowed, not widened, in order to capture these specific offenders. Giving judges, after full hearings, the authority to make these decisions will bring us closer to this goal. And don't worry: Judges have and will continue to send appropriate youth to the adult system.

Since the reforms of the '90s, cutting-edge research in psychology and neurology have scientifically confirmed what most parents have always known: that the brains of children are malleable and mature over time. The portion of the brain that controls reasoning, impulse control, and long-term decisionmaking is not fully developed until a young person is in his or her 20s. We should not ignore what this research has taught us: The 15or 16-year-old youth may look like a grown man, but he is not.

Many of the changes the JustChildren report calls us to re-examine were made in an atmosphere of fear that was unfounded. The majority of violent crime continues to be committed by adults, not children, and the changes we have made to "get tough" on this population have actually had no discernible effect on juvenile crime at all and may have made things worse. It is time for us to stop making decisions based on what we fear and make them, instead, by relying on what we know to be true.
Kim O'Donnell is a former judge of the Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court and a former member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Juvenile Justice and Adolescent Development. Contact her at kimodonnell52160@gmail.com or (804) 382-4434.