The Wrong Answer to Littleton.

• Author: TWOHEY, MEGAN
• Position: The prosecution of teenage crime

A few teen criminals belong in prison, but most do not

We've all become well-acquainted with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two boys who tore through their hallways and classrooms in Littleton, Colo. in April, spraying bullets that left 12 students and one teacher dead. Their pictures were plastered on the covers of most major magazines; their life stories were regurgitated on every local and national news broadcast. Images of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" will linger in the American memory for years to come, reminding us that even adolescents are capable of horrific crimes.

We're less familiar with boys like Ronnie Vera. Last year, Ronnie, 18, entered an Arizona prison. He is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for two counts of first-degree burglary and one count of first-degree murder. Unlike Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Ronnie did not kill anyone. He and a friend were caught stealing a bike by a prominent community activist in Tucson. Ronnie turned to run. His friend pulled out a gun and shot and killed the community activist. One year later, a jury convicted both Ronnie and his friend of murder.

Ronnie was 16 at the time. In most cases, youths under age 18 who break the law enter a juvenile court system. Ronnie, however, stood trial before an adult criminal court. He received an adult sentence, and currently lives behind bars in an adult prison. "From 16 on, he grew up really fast," said Yolanda Vera, Ronnie's mother.

Ronnie is not alone. In its zeal to protect us from cold-blooded teen killers, Congress is now considering sweeping new legislation that threatens to put thousands of relatively harmless kids into adult jails. The trend is already well underway at the state level: From 1992 to 1995, 40 states and the District of Columbia passed laws making it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults. Some state legislatures did so by lowering the juvenile cut-off age--in some cases to age 16 or 17, in others, to age 14. As a result, an estimated 180,000 cases involving 16- or 17-year-olds were tried in criminal court because young defendants were defined as adults under state law in 1994. States also enacted legislation to lengthen the list of crimes that, if committed, exclude a young offender from the juvenile system. Many youths are now automatically transferred to adult court for prosecution for violent crimes and drug offenses, even though federal studies show that older inmates tend to beat and rape teens serving in adult facilitities.

If these policies were merely the price we had to pay to keep our streets safe from monsters like Dylan, they might be forgiveable. But the statistics suggest that the new laws are simply creating more hardened young criminals. Three studies conducted in New York, Florida, and Minnesota compared the cases of young defendants who entered juvenile court systems to those who entered adult criminal courts. In all three studies, youths who entered adult systems had higher recidivism rates than their juvenile system counterparts (that is, they were more likely to be rearrested).

Youths who enter adult systems are not only more likely to commit more crimes; they also tend to receive lesser sentences. Ohio and Illinois studies found that juveniles serving "adult time for adult crime" were released earlier in non-murder cases than those in juvenile systems. Whatever the flaws of the juvenile justice system, the...