Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s transition team studying crime and public safety issues got it right on its recommendations for dealing with juvenile crime, especially in adjusting how and when juveniles should face adult sanctioning.
Statistics in Louisiana capturing juvenile criminal behavior are incomplete and difficult to corral, but it appears that this has increased in frequency over the past few years. In some other jurisdictions with similar treatment under the law and more complete data, such as New York City, confirm such an increase.
The report on this subject, released last week and which echoes without the detail of a previous one from the attorney general’s office when Landry headed that, concludes “Soft on crime philosophies have failed, allowing the juvenile crime crisis to spiral out of control.” It recommends various measures to compensate such as mandating certain minimum penalties, introducing probation and parole as options, and transparency in releasing juvenile correctional information that can lead to more appropriate reactions to change miscreant behavior.
However, the most foundational change involves reversing something initiated by Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards: raising the age from 17 to 18 at which a juvenile may be considered as an adult in the system although a prosecutor can petition for violent crime suspects younger than 18 to be treated as adults, both at trial and in punishment. While this would run counter to recent trends in other states, a bill that automatically would try accused felons at 17 for violent crimes by Republican state Sen. Stewart Cathey passed the Legislature last year but fell victim to Edwards’ veto pen.
Edwards and special interest backers of the move allege that treating older juveniles as adults exposes them to more violent offenders that imprints onto their own behavior that increases future recidivism and is unjustified as supposedly even older juveniles have inadequate impulse control. But this view ignores certain options and bluntly glosses over the research.
Advocates of keeping the age raised ignore that the “contagion” effect of violent adult offenders onto the younger works the other way: in settings with juveniles, older violent ones can pass along those tendencies to the younger. And the contagion effect can be ameliorated by trying older juveniles in adult court but using parole and probation sentencing options when appropriate, as the report recommended.
The deterrent impact of adult rather than juvenile punishment is measured both specifically, or for a single crime on future commission, or generally, that deters future crime from occurring at all. Research shows older juveniles incarcerated in adult facilities for most crimes have higher recidivism rates than those going through a juvenile system (drug crimes a notable exception), but where these juveniles became less likely to be prosecuted through the system that enacted more severe punishment (typically the adult), arrests for violent crime subsequently increased.
Thus, two different effects work against each other. However, the overall increased recidivism of specific deterrence, research also has discovered, can be blunted by sentencing juveniles as adults to smaller and decentralized congregate settings until they become older. This argues for expanding adult-like imprisonment but kept among juveniles, not unlike the state’s juvenile facilities strained for space. But, again, this problem could be alleviated to a degree with use of probation and parole.
In short, Louisiana compulsorily charging 17-year-olds, who clearly are old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, through the adult system if handled properly should reduce overall crime, if not their future recidivism. The data indicate this change should be a priority for an anticipated legislative special session on crime next month.
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