Senate is right on juvenile justice law

5/29/07
The state Senate took an important stance on juvenile justice last week, passing legislation that would take 16- and 17-year-olds out of the adult justice system for nonviolent crimes. It’s a good move, and deserves approval by the House of Representatives.
Connecticut is one of only three states, with New York and North Carolina, to treat such defendants as adults, and it makes sense to change that. A criminal record can haunt a person for life, and efforts should be made to keep people without better judgment out of the system in most cases.
The change would not affect violent offenders; teens as young as 14 could be charged in Superior Court under specific circumstances. But nonviolent offenders — accomplices, bystanders or otherwise — would be spared the harshest punishments.
It would be a major change in Connecticut law, and a welcome one. The current system sees up to 12,000 young people per year arrested, and most of them would now be handled by the juvenile justice system. It doesn’t benefit the state or the accused to see them begin a lifetime of recidivism, which is often the outcome once someone enters the adult system.
Lawmakers made important points about the gains from keeping young people out of adult courts. Criminal records follow people around for years, and close off doors that the accused may not even know about. And because it has been proven that many young people do not possess the reasoning skills and mental capacity that they will develop later in life, it makes sense to treat them differently before the law.
This change does not involve going easy on criminals, or giving prisoners a break. One of our society’s greatest problems is a culture where young people spend their lives in and out of jail, in and out of the court system. Heading that off before it starts is our best prevention method.
A brush with the juvenile detention service can also serve to send a message to young people about where their behavior could lead them if they don’t turn around. But let that lesson be one that they can recover from, not one that will haunt them the rest of their days. As Sen. Edwin A. Gomes, D-Bridgeport, said, "When you put a 16- and 17-year-old into jail, you put them in there with hardened criminals. And guess who’s doing the teaching in jail? The only people who are doing the teaching in jail are the criminals."
It’s a lesson that the House and Gov. M. Jodi Rell should listen to, and they should pass and sign this bill into law. It’s better for our young people and better for society as a whole.