DN Editorial: Juvenile crimes may get a new look from U.S. Supreme Court
IN RECENT years, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the death penalty is unconstitutional for offenders who commit their crimes as juveniles. It has banned sentences of "life without parole" for nonhomicide crimes committed by kids under 1
IN RECENT years, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the death penalty is unconstitutional for offenders who commit their crimes as juveniles. It has banned sentences of "life without parole" for nonhomicide crimes committed by kids under 18. Both decisions were based on what appears to be a growing recognition - at least on the part of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was the swing vote in two decisions that, compared with adults, youths lack the ability to make mature decisions and so could be less culpable for even the most heinous crimes.
In the logical next step, civil- rights attorney Bryan Stevenson earlier this month asked the court to ban sentences of "life without parole" for offenders who committed murder when they were younger than 18. (Pennsylvania has more juvenile offenders serving that sentence - 444 - than any other state.)
Scientific evidence about teenage brain development supports banning mandatory sentences, as well as allowing juveniles a chance to qualify for parole, and that is how the court should rule.
But arguments in the case - coming as they do during the national uproar over the Trayvon Martin case, with its overtones of race and vigilantism - remind us how a spike in violent juvenile crime in the late 1980s led to predictions of a generation of "juvenile superpredators" who would be "impulsive and brutally remorseless."
The research's validity was challenged at the time, but the predictions nevertheless led to a stampede of state legislation: From 1992 to 1999, 49 states and the District of Columbia passed laws that made it easier - if not mandatory - for juveniles to be tried as adults, allowing for little or no flexibility to treat juvenile offenders - even the very young, even those swept up into criminal acts by older friends or relatives.
Two decades later, those predictions have been proven wrong, so wrong that Penn professor John Dilulio Jr., who is widely credited with coining the term "superpredator," joined in a "friend of the court" brief in the current Supreme Court case that said there is no evidence that allowing juvenile offenders the possibility of parole would result in an increase in crime.
Dilulio - who served as the Bush administration's first head of Faith-Based Initiatives, called not for more incarceration for juvenile offenders, but for faith-based anticrime efforts. But incarceration is what we got, and how: We now have the highest rate in the world.
Faulty research - used by opportunistic politicians - led practically overnight to the creation of harsh, ineffective laws. It also strengthened negative stereotypes of young black men. It's unlikely the facts will result in a reverse of course. But as the Trayvon Martin case demonstrates, it is long past time to refute the myths.
With actual facts this time.