Tough Juvenile Sentencing Getting Second Look
By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
Originally published by Reuters, May 18, 2001
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The case of 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill, convicted this week of second-degree murder for shooting a teacher, has reignited debate over whether juvenile offenders should be tried as adults.
In the past decade, largely in response to high profile school shootings and a spike in violent crime by juveniles which has since subsided, all states but one enacted or toughened laws making it easier to try people under age 18 as adults.
The laws, which have been denounced by human rights organizations like Amnesty International as a violation of international norms, have resulted in hundreds of teen-agers being sentenced to long terms and sent to adult prisons. Since 1976, 17 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under 18 while another 80 remain on death row.
Brazill faces 25 years to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for killing English teacher Barry Grunow. His sentencing is scheduled for June 29.
JEB BUSH SPEAKS OUT
The Brazill conviction prompted an unusual response from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of President Bush, who said the youth should not be sentenced as an adult, even though he had been tried as one.
"There is a different standard for children. There should be sensitivity to the fact that a 14-year-old is not a little adult," he said.
Bush's intervention may reflect some recent data indicating that public support for punishing minors as adults is weakening. One public opinion poll released in March found that 72 percent believed juvenile offenders should be tried in juvenile courts.
"We may be seeing perhaps a glimmer of hope that the pendulum is beginning to swing away from these harsh policies as people become more educated about the fact that they don't work and they are unfair," said Marc Schindler, a lawyer with the Youth Law Center in Washington DC.
But there is also evidence suggesting the opposite. In California last year, voters approved a ballot proposition that required children as young as 14 to be tried in adult criminal court for murder and certain other violent crimes. A federal appeals court later ruled that part of the proposition was unconstitutional and struck it down.
Legislation was introduced in Congress twice in four years that would require tough treatment for so-called juvenile "superpredators." The bill was not enacted either time, but sponsors are scheduled to try again with a new bill next week.
Critics say treating teen-agers as if they were adults is ineffective as a deterrent, puts the young people at severe risk of abuse in prison, turns them into hardened criminals and is applied disproportionately against black teens.
In one study in Cook County, Illinois, 99 percent of the youth tried as adults were black or Hispanic. In another study of 2,584 cases in 18 jurisdictions, 82 percent of the juveniles tried as adults were minorities.
Statistics do not confirm the widely held public perception that youth crime is out of control, according to Vincent Schiraldi of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
"There has been a wave of anti-youth sentiment but in fact, almost every way you measure it, this generation is better behaved than their baby-boomer parents. The juvenile homicide rate is the lowest it's been since 1966," he said.
FLORIDA LEADS NATION
Florida leads the nation in sending youths to adult prison, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington research institute. One in three of the state's 70,000 prisoners entered the system for crimes committed when they were 17 or younger.
Last year, the state legislature passed a measure that allows 16 and 17-year-olds to be sentenced to life in prison for using a handgun in a crime.
Florida is also one of 15 states that allows prosecutors rather than judges to decide whether a child should be tried as an adult. Critics say that kind of leeway tempts prosecutors, who may be trying to build political careers, to grandstand by going after young offenders and saying they are "tough on crime."
Palm Beach prosecutor Barry Krischer, who was running for re-election at the time he was handling the Brazill case, commissioned a private poll last year asking whether juveniles accused of murder should be charged as adults, his spokesman told the Palm Beach Post this month.
Krischer said he had no choice but to try Brazill as an adult because there was no sentence in the juvenile justice system sufficiently severe for the crime he had committed.
Several studies have found that juveniles prosecuted as adults are more likely to commit another crime than those handled by the juvenile justice system. Youths put into adult prisons are also 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide and five times more likely to be raped than those held in juvenile facilities.
