Study: Courts too often treat juveniles as adults

The authority of Virginia's juvenile-court judges is being usurped by prosecutors and higher courts in a process that too often mixes juvenile offenders and adults and that helps transform juvenile lawbreakers onto career felons, according to a study released today.

"Putting youth in the adult system ultimately makes communities less safe," the study says.

JustChildren, an arm of the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center, is arguing that judicial reforms 13 years ago gave prosecutors too much leeway in seeking adult treatment of juvenile offenders and left sentencing to circuit court judges who lack the training and experience to deal with juvenile cases.

The study will be reviewed by the State Crime Commission when it meets next month to take up juvenile-justice considerations.

The study attacks what it calls the overreactions in the early 1990s to predictions of an underage "crime wave of epic proportions on Virginia" and of a "new breed of violence among our kids." The fears resulted in laws that reduced the authority of juvenile-court judges and allowed the easier transfer of juvenile-criminal cases to adult courts.

But Richard P. Kern, who espoused some of those fears and is now director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, said yesterday that reforms enacted in 1996 have helped give judges a clearer vision of a person's juvenile-criminal history and the ability to assure that past history becomes part of the sentencing process.

"The changes helped identify the career criminal at an early age," helping to cut short predictions of increased crime among juveniles and young adults, he said.

The sentencing commission released a report this year showing that 4,491 juveniles in Virginia were convicted of crimes in circuit courts from 2001 through 2008; most of those juveniles were 17 when the crimes were committed.

And while 45 percent of the juvenile offenders were sentenced to adult prison, most served their juvenile years in juvenile facilities before being transferred to adult facilities.

But the JustChildren study notes that the sentencing commission found that about half of all youths convicted in the 2001-08 period were convicted of robbery or nonsexual assault, serious charges than may be more typical of juvenile behavior than an adult-like crime.

Fewer than half of juveniles convicted in circuit courts went to adult prisons, and one in every five youths were placed on probation but still carried felony convictions on their records.

The large numbers of youths receiving felony adult convictions but kept in juvenile facilities or released on probation suggests that the juvenile courts are being underutilized, said Andrew Block of JustChildren.

Block said African-American youths represent a disproportionate number of youths entering the adult-judicial system: They make up 20 percent of the youth population statewide but 73 percent of youths transferred to adult courts.

In 2008, according to the state Department of Corrections, 88 prisoners in adult facilities were younger than 18.

Kern and others, though, say circuit judges are able to sentence juveniles under juvenile-sentencing laws and that only the most serious crimes — homicide and aggravated malicious wounding — must be transferred to higher courts.

Block said months can go by while juveniles are held in adult jails waiting for circuit court proceedings and that the 700 juvenile cases transferred to higher courts each year in Virginia represent a loss of rehabilitation and counseling opportunities.

JustChildren wants to restore the authority of juvenile judges to make decisions about transferring matters to higher courts except for the most serious crimes, to increase training for circuit judges, and to reduce the use of adult jails for pretrial detention of juveniles.

JustChildren said the changes generally are opposed by prosecutors across the state, but they are supported by public defenders, circuit and juvenile-court judges, and juvenile-court professionals.

Bill McKelway is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.