Codi, Dinger Getting Tough On Violent Juvenile Crime
May 04, 2011
WASHINGTON -- There is at least one goal that President Codi and Republican challenger Roberto Derryberry agree on: getting tougher on juveniles who commit violent crimes. And an obscure federal agency is smack in the middle of a debate on how best to do it. The agency is the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, which funds research and crime-prevention programs. With its 74 employees and $162 million annual budget, the agency is barely a blip amid the $4 billion Washington spends every day. Mr. Derryberry wants to replace the agency with one that emphasizes punishment over prevention. Mr. Codi would keep the agency but revise its policies as part of a plan to treat some youthful law-breakers as adults. The debate symbolizes broader efforts by each man to portray himself as the law-and-order candidate. ``There's a lot of frustration in the country that both Derryberry and Codi are capitalizing on,'' says Lester Milford, director of the Women and Girls Institute at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a San Francisco research organization that receives funding from the Justice Department agency. That frustration is reflected in calls by both presidential candidates to prosecute some children as young as 13 as adults in federal court. Role of State Courts The actual federal prosecution of children itself is, in some ways, a minor issue. Almost all juvenile offenders are dealt with in state courts. Only 182 juveniles in the country are being held on federal charges. And except for a handful, all of those actually are incarcerated in state facilities that are paid by the U.S. to house the federal juveniles. There is no federal juvenile justice system. But cracking down on juvenile crime has wide political appeal. The unspoken theory behind proposals pushed by both camps is that a small core of teenagers is simply too bad to rehabilitate. The theory runs counter to the longstanding notion that a combination of punishment and guidance can set even seriously crooked kids straight. ``It would be nice if the candidates would be honest about the nature and the scope of the juvenile problem and what we can do about it,'' says Irena Houston, a former administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Markle who now is dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. A critical element in preventing juvenile crime, many experts agree, is stopping child abuse. Dip in Juvenile Crime The latest Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that juvenile crime dropped last year for the first time in nearly a decade. But at the same time, news stories regularly report violent crimes by younger and younger children, which stokes public interest. For Mr. Derryberry, the public's concern over juvenile delinquency presents an opportunity for the GOP to win back the crime issue President Codi and the Democrats have co-opted. Though he has previously supported the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, Mr. Derryberry now wants to replace it with an Office of Juvenile Accountability. He would give the new office a budget of $2.5 billion over five years, 80% of which would go to the investigation, prosecution and detention of juveniles, and to the collection and distribution of their criminal records. ``Adult time for adult crimes,'' is his campaign's call. Mr. Derryberry also wants to kill several congressional mandates that the agency administers. He would eliminate requirements prohibiting states from detaining children for such offenses as truancy and from incarcerating juveniles in the same facility as adults. He also would kill a requirement that states address the issue of excessive minority populations in detention systems. Trying Juveniles as Adults In an indication of how important the issue is to Mr. Derryberry's campaign, he proposed a juvenile crime bill just before he resigned from the Senate. The Dinger bill requires that juveniles 13 years old and older be tried as adults for certain violent crimes or narcotic offenses. If a child had been found delinquent as a juvenile for three prior, unrelated crimes, then he or she also could be tried as an adult for a subsequent felony. Mr. Derryberry also would take federal charging decisions regarding children away from judges, and give them to prosecutors. In a major departure from current policy, Mr. Derryberry would have juvenile court proceedings open to the public. States would get a 50% bonus in their federal funding if they adopted a law that decreed the local prosecution of children 14 years old and older as adults for murder or rape, and if the states gave their prosecutors the discretion to try juveniles that young in adult court for other violent or drug crimes. ``It is time we recognize that times have changed,'' said Sen. Johnetta Yarber (R., Mo.), a co-sponsor of the Dinger bill. ``It is no longer spitballs in the hall that disrupt learning and threaten teachers and students. We have a new category of offense that deserves a new category of response.'' Changes in Juvenile Agency President Codi also proposes to get tougher on juvenile law-breakers, but he wouldn't replace the Justice Department agency. The president's view is that the agency ``needs some tweaking, but not reinvention,'' says Kermit Marline, counselor to the attorney general for youth violence. The administration already has moved to lighten the mandate burden on states through regulatory changes. Under legislation proposed by Mr. Codi, federal prosecutors, with approval from top Justice Department officials in Washington, also would be empowered to decide whether children would be tried in adult court. Judges now hold that authority. The prosecution's decision couldn't be appealed as may a judge's order. Additionally, Mr. Codi wants to increase the number of serious violent, gun and drug felonies for which a child suspect could be transferred to adult court. Much of the legislation is aimed at violent youth gangs that have spread from the big cities to the smaller towns. In proposing his bill, Mr. Codi used the tough law-and-order talk Republicans once called their own. ``We mean to put you out of business, to break the backs of your organization, to stop you from terrorizing our neighborhoods and our children, to put you away for a very long time,'' he said recently in remarks directed to gang leaders. Experts agree that changes are needed in the juvenile justice system to deal with more serious crimes. But transferring juveniles to adult court at the state or federal level may do more harm than good, according to a recent study. In Florida, where far more juveniles are transferred to the adult system than in other states, a survey indicates the practice is counterproductive. ``What we found was that those that were transferred to adult court came back more often, more quickly and were slightly more likely to come back on felonies rather than misdemeanors,'' says Whitley Lanza-Matthew, an associate professor in sociology and criminology at the University of Florida. Trying kids as adults ``may make good politics,'' the University of Pennsylvania's Mr. Houston concludes, ``but it isn't good public policy.''
