GOP Launches New Fight on Juvenile Crime

WASHINGTON — Opening a new front in the war on juvenile crime, Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that could all but dismantle the federal criminal justice system for underage defendants, allowing offenders as young as 13 to be treated as adults in federal courts.

Called draconian by critics, the bill would give broad authority to prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults in federal cases, increase the types of offenses that make juveniles eligible for such charges, open to public scrutiny juvenile records and court proceedings and allow juveniles to be incarcerated alongside adults.

The vast majority of juvenile offenders now are tried in state courts, in part because prosecutors face numerous legal and bureaucratic hurdles before they are allowed to try youths as adults in federal courts. Among the barriers is what amounts to permission from the U.S. attorney general, who must certify to the existence of an array of legal circumstances before a juvenile can be charged as an adult with a federal criminal offense.

The GOP-backed bill would remove most of those hurdles. It would allow, for instance, a juvenile as young as 14 who is charged with a serious violent felony under federal law, such as murder or rape, to be tried as an adult without special permission (the current age limit is 18). Under the measure, even a 13-year-old could be tried as an adult--if the attorney general were to approve.

Currently, the number of juvenile cases in federal courts number about 200 annually. But those on both sides of the issue agree that the bid to remove obstacles to prosecuting juveniles as adults--if successful--could lead to a sharp increase in the number of such cases in the federal courts.

Sponsored by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), the measure comes even as violent crimes committed by those under 18 are declining.

Analysts, though, conceded that isolated cases involving juveniles often are the subject of media attention and thus give the illusion that such violence is rampant. And, according to McCollum, an urgent need for his legislation can be discerned in the nation’s demographic trends, which project a 31% increase in the youth population by the year 2010 as the children of baby boomers come of age.

“Among them will be a wave of highly crime-prone males--teenagers from fatherless homes growing up in neighborhoods where gangs, drugs and violence are commonplace and consequences for misbehavior by children are almost nonexistent,” McCollum said.

Detractors complained that, while the bill would provide about $1.4 billion to states over three years to fund programs to combat juvenile crime and to build more correctional facilities, it provides not a penny for prevention.

House debate on the bill is scheduled to commence today, with a vote Thursday.