Children taught crime

Kids behind barsWhat are we thinking?

Young offenders transferred to the adult system are later arrested for violent and other crimes 34 percent more frequently.

State-run programs for juvenile offenders achieve poor results.

John Dvorak asks,
“As usual, what should be obvious if you think about it for half a second took a study to prove.”

“The politics of crime are far behind the science of criminality.” says says criminologist Jeffrey A. Fagan of Columbia University.

“Even given problems in the juvenile-justice system, transfer to the adult-justice system produces even worse results,” says the Centers for Disease Control.

Beginning around 35 years ago, increases in violent juvenile crime spurred many states to modify laws so that young people could be tried as adults for serious crimes. By 2004, 44 states and the District of Columbia permitted judges to transfer juveniles to adult-criminal courts.

No national data exist on the number of juvenile offenders prosecuted as adults, but there’s no evidence that shifting some young offenders to the adult-justice system prevents or reduces violence in the general population of children and teenagers.