Juvenile Injustice

It's hard to know which is more cynical -- the content of the juvenile crime bill Republicans have crafted or the way they are trying to railroad it to enactment.

If you haven't heard about the pending legislation -- well, that's part of the cynicism. Even a fairly alert observer at the Capitol last Tuesday -- assuming such an observer wasn't distracted by the roaring Clinton/Lewinsky scandal or by the party primaries in the Washington area -- might have missed it. He might have seen a notice for a vote to reauthorize the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children -- a piece of legislation so noncontroversial it might have sparked little interest.

In the meantime, however, the House had passed two separate -- and hardly noncontroversial -- juvenile justice measures, attached them to the National Center reauthorization bill and sent the packet back to the Senate. By the end of last week, Republican legislators were scurrying to put together a House-Senate conference committee to consider the now-mislabeled package.

It gets worse. A conference bill would not be subject to amendment -- just a yea-or-nay vote. Thus the measure might have been passed -- indeed it still might be -- without debate on its contents.

And what contents. One of the House-passed measures whose language has been substituted for the National Center reauthorization bill would mandate that in order to be eligible for federal juvenile-justice funding, a state must agree to try children as young as 15 as adults -- either at the discretion of the prosecutor or automatically for certain offenses. No more judicial discretion, as is presently the case. Another would ease requirements for separating child offenders from adults once they are convicted and sentenced.

Critics of the legislation include the Justice Policy Institute, the Youth Law Center and the Children's Defense Fund. For CDF particularly, it's a case of deja vu. More than 20 years ago, CDF staffers visited 449 jails in 126 counties and nine cities and found children in adult jails in every state. Many were rough kids, but many were ordinary delinquents, were awaiting juvenile court hearings or were status offenders -- runaways and so on.

That report helped to produce some of the legislative protections for child offenders that the current legislation would roll back -- almost certainly throwing more children into adult prisons.

Why do I call it cynical? Because if the legislation's sponsors had been interested in crime prevention or rehabilitation -- even if they'd just been interested in trying to understand what's happening with young people in America -- they would have held hearings, open debates, serious discussions. Because little in their legislative packet has anything to do with helping young people stay straight (unless the thought is that threatening to expose them to sexual and other abuse at the hands of adult offenders is "prevention"). Because the legislation seems calculated more to appease frightened voters this election season than to address seriously the deadly serious problems of juvenile justice.

Moreover, the gentlemen who introduced these measures -- Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) in one case, and Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in the other -- have been around long enough to know that Draconian legislation is nearly always more effective at making voters feel better than at reducing crime. Maybe that's why they've chosen this fiendishly clever way of steering their bill toward passage. The normal process might expose its cynicism.

For certain it's not because they can't find anything better to occupy their time. Hatch, after all, is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that shortly will be considering the impeach .

Never mind. One cynical subject at a time.

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company