KEY POINTS:
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 are 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 offences are more serious.
Shay Bilchik, of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, referred to tough sentencing laws adopted in the 1990s as the "trifecta of bad criminal justice policy" - borrowing a term from racetrack betting that loosely translates as the "perfect example".
"People didn't know that at the time the changes were made," said Bilchik, a former prosecutor. "Now we do, and we have to learn from it."
Juvenile crime is down, in contrast to the turbulent last decade when politicians vied to pass laws to get violent kids off the streets. Now, in calmer times, some champion community programmes for young offenders to replace punitive measures they say went too far.
"The net was thrown too broadly," says Howard Snyder, of the National Centre 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."
Some states are reconsidering giving teens a life sentence without parole. Some are focusing on raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, while others are exploring ways to offer kids a second chance, once they're locked up - or even before.
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," says Minnesota prosecutor James Backstrom. "We need to focus on protecting the public - that's number one. Then we can address the needs of the juvenile offenders."
Each year about 200,000 defendants under 18 are sent directly or transferred to the adult system, known as criminal court.
Most end up there because of state laws that automatically define them as adults, due to their age or offence. Their ranks rose in the 1990s as juvenile crime soared and 48 states made it easier to transfer kids into criminal court.
These changes gave prosecutors greater latitude (they could transfer kids without a judge's permission), lowered the age or expanded the crimes that would make it mandatory for a case to be tried in adult courts. Some states also adopted blended sentences in which two sanctions can be imposed simultaneously: if the teen follows the terms of the juvenile sentence, the adult sentence is revoked.
The changes were intended to curb the explosion in violence - the teen murder arrest rate doubled from 1987 to 1993 - and to address mounting frustrations with the juvenile justice system.
A series of horrific crimes by kids had rattled the nation. Some academics warned that a new generation of "superpredators" would soon be committing mayhem.
It never happened. Drug trafficking declined. An improved economy produced more jobs. And the rate of juvenile violent crime arrests plummeted 46 per cent from 1994 to 2005.
Some states have already begun to make changes.
- AP
