Juvenile Injustice
Juvenile crime rates have fallen since the 1990s, when 48 states made it easier to try young offenders as adults. Now the tide may be turning toward rehabilitating teens rather than locking them up. To help readers sort through these highly charged issues, a team of AP writers -- Malcolm Ritter, Sharon Cohen, Adam Geller, Helen O'Neill, Pauline Arrillaga and Todd Lewan -- have produced a thought-provoking series, "Youth on Trial." Under current laws, they show, a judge may face an unsettling decision such as this one:
The boy before Judge Kenneth Biehn was quiet and withdrawn, an asthmatic whose mother used and sold crack cocaine and whose father was doing time for robbery. At just 14, Kareem Watts stood accused of his own, much more horrific crime: Stabbing to death a neighbor who disrespected his mother.
He had admitted to a psychologist, "I took the knife and stabbed her." So guilt was not in dispute.
The decision facing Judge Biehn was how this case would be handled.
He could allow this boy to be prosecuted and sentenced as an adult, likely meaning decades in prison -- or he could transfer the case to the juvenile system, where the teen would be confined and receive treatment but only until his 21st birthday, when he'd be released onto the streets a free man.
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