By Mark Morris
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Recent Supreme Court rulings finding that juveniles are less culpable for crimes than their adult counterparts are resonating in state capitals across the country, Jefferson City included.
Missouri joined 23 states in the last three years to limit juveniles’ prosecution in adult courts and their incarceration in adult jails and prisons, according to a study by the Campaign for Youth Justice, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.
“States are recognizing that youth have developmental differences from adults as well as a great potential for rehabilitation, both of which should be taken into account in sentencing,” said campaign vice president Jessica Sandoval.
The impetus for this movement has been a string of Supreme Court rulings that barred the use of the death sentence and a prison term of life without possibility of parole for offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes.
In a 2012 case that struck down mandatory life sentences for two 14-year-olds, the court affirmed its belief in this “foundational principle.”
“Imposition of a state’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
Though Missouri’s approach has been less sweeping than those of other states, it does try to spur state judges to take advantage of a little-used sentencing program on the books since the mid-1990s.
Called the “dual jurisdiction” program, it allows juveniles who are convicted of crimes after being certified as adults to receive services and treatment from the state juvenile justice system rather than being sent to an adult prison. Youthful offenders often come out of prison more inclined to commit new crimes, experts say.
Missouri Sen. Wayne Wallingford said the problem with the program was that judges didn’t use it much.
A 2010 study by the Anne E. Casey Foundation found that in the program’s first 12 years, only 64 youths had been referred to the dual jurisdiction program. Last year, judges throughout the state referred just seven youths, all boys, to the program, which is housed in a secure 40-bed state facility in Montgomery City.
Of the 64 youths surveyed at the end of the Casey study period, 39 were released after treatment, 18 still were receiving treatment and seven had been transferred to an adult prison after not responding to treatment.
Of the 39 who completed treatment, 31 avoided a return to prison.
Those numbers appealed to Wallingford, who began work in 2011 on legislation that could get more youths into the program. It passed this year and took effect in August.
Wallingford said the Supreme Court rulings piqued his interest in juvenile incarceration. But what really moved him on the issue of putting kids in adult prisons was a National Geographic article on the slow development of adolescent brains.
He also watched videos of teenagers riding skateboards off buildings.
“They don’t look at the consequences or imagine what can happen to them,” Wallingford said. “They’re not thinking.”
He found a natural ally in Tracy McClard, whose 17-year-old son committed suicide in an adult Missouri prison after being sentenced to 30 years for assaulting an acquaintance. Afterward, the Jackson, Mo., resident founded Families and Friends Organizing Reform of Juvenile Justice.
Together they worked on Jonathan’s Law, which requires judges to order an assessment on the dual jurisdiction suitability of every child being considered for certification as an adult.
Nothing would compel a judge to put the youth in the program, but the judge would have to state on the record his or her reasons for not doing so.
And if youths get in trouble near their 17th birthday, when they can be taken to adult court without certification, the law extends eligibility for dual jurisdiction until the youth is 17 years and six months old. That gives social service workers more time to write their evaluations.
“And it gives the court more time,” McClard said.
Carmen Daugherty, policy director for the Campaign for Youth Justice, said she is encouraged by the steady pace of change in Missouri, which already is viewed as a national leader in its juvenile justice practices.
“This is going to open a lot of doors for a lot of kids,” Daugherty said.
McClard and Wallingford said they have no plans for more juvenile justice legislation in the 2014 session of the General Assembly. For now, they’re planning to monitor the effect of the dual jurisdiction legislation and form a task force to gather data on youths who are marking time in Missouri’s adult prisons and jails. Ideas will flow from that.
Wallingford said the payoff could be keeping impressionable youths away from experienced criminals and the life of repeated incarceration that often involves.
“That costs a lot of money that we can be putting into education and not into prisons,” Wallingford said.