"States rethink charging youths as adults"

[GreenPartyVoter]

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 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, 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."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071201/ap_on_re_us/youth_on_trial

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Not one person has an opinion on this?

[in_cog_ni_to]

2. I do! I am so relieved! I thought this was going to be about charging 8 & 9 year olds with murder

and treating them as adults. Whew. This is good news! Thanks!

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Yeah I thought so too!

[SoCalDem]

4. The secret of juvenile crime is to PREVENT it..

Somewhere around age 12, most kids get a view of what their future is going to be.

If they see college and a good life ahead of them, they can make it through their teens in good shape, but if all they see is unemployed people in their families and neighborhoods, and the only ones with "stuff" and money are criminals, what do we think they will aspire to be?

Instead of spending all that money on detention centers and prisons, they would be wiser to spend it on scholarships and improved housing & real jobs for the parents of these kids.

Hopelessless breeds crime..just as it breeds insurgencies in Iraq.

we actually have an active insurgency group in every large city of America....the criminal element and the gangs are insurgents against our greedy capitalism..

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. I think you are right. :^(