House OKs Plan to Prosecute More Teens as Adults

The House on Thursday easily approved a tough and potentially far-reaching juvenile-crime bill that would allow offenders as young as 13 to be tried as adults in federal courts.

The GOP-sponsored measure also would disburse $1.5 billion in crime-fighting funds to states that bring their laws into compliance with the federal standards, which would all but abolish the special treatment traditionally accorded young people accused of serious crimes.

The legislation, characterized as counterproductive and excessively harsh by many House Democrats, would give federal prosecutors broad authority to charge juveniles as adults, increase the types of offenses that make juveniles eligible for such treatment, open to public scrutiny juvenile records and court proceedings and allow juveniles to be incarcerated with adults.

“In America today, no population poses a greater threat to public safety than juvenile criminals,” said Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), the bill’s author.

The measure’s immediate effect would be limited because few juveniles commit federal crimes each year. But its impact would be broadly felt if states, as a result, toughen their laws and bring them into harmony with the standards in the House-passed bill.

About 12,300 youths already are prosecuted as adults each year in state courts--about 9% of juveniles arrested for violent crimes--but that number could soar if the bill becomes law and states follow suit. And if that were to happen, said one children’s advocate, “it’s not clear what’s left [of the juvenile-justice system].”

But McCollum said his bill addresses “one of the most important issues we will tackle in this Congress,” especially with a projected increase in the number of teenagers as the children of today’s baby boomers come of age in the decades ahead.

During Thursday’s floor debate, McCollum vowed to offer additional legislation later this year to address issues of crime prevention, a subject left untouched by his bill--as many Democratic critics noted.

Led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), they derided the bill as a cynical effort to present a tough crime-fighting image that in fact does nothing to attempt to prevent violent juvenile crime in the first place.

“[Republicans] want to lock them up and ignore the problem,” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who was a Michigan state trooper for 12 years before coming to Congress.

Final passage of the bill came on a 286-132 vote after the House, largely along partisan lines, defeated a Democratic alternative that would have allocated 60% of the $1.5-billion bill to crime-prevention efforts.

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate also have proclaimed their intention to crack down on juvenile crime, as has the White House. But Democrats view prevention and intervention efforts far more favorably than Republicans. The Senate Judiciary Committee later this year is scheduled to consider its own version of the Violent Juvenile Offenders Act.

During House debate, many Democrats delighted in accusing Republicans of going against their deeply held philosophy of returning power to the states, because the bill requires states to follow federal requirements before becoming eligible for the block grants. That attitude embodies a “Washington knows best approach,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

But Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the requirements are simply intended “to encourage states to update their juvenile-justice systems,” adding: “We do that all the time--offer incentives.”

In Sacramento, state legislation that also would have treated violent juvenile offenders as adults--sponsored by Gov. Pete Wilson--failed recently to survive initial hearings in the Democratic-controlled houses.

Hearing the news from Washington, Wilson said he was “pleased” to see this “first step by the federal government making clear that criminal and violent behavior will not be tolerated.”

Wilson said the House measure “includes components very similar” to elements of his own package, adding that “unfortunately, due to the obstructionist efforts of some key Democrats in the Legislature, these bills did not enjoy the same bipartisan support [as the House bill] and died in committee.”

By contrast, state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, said the vote in Washington made him “more of a states-righter than ever.”

“To treat kids in a mandatory way is profoundly wrong. . . . To write them off at that age is awfully callous, awfully cynical, not very effective.”

Under the House bill, states may use the funds, which would be dispensed over a three-year period, to hire prosecutors, build more jails and prisons and create drug courts, among other uses.

About two-thirds of the states, including California, would have to toughen their juvenile-justice laws to become eligible for the block grants. One qualifying step would be to take away from judges any role in the decision to “waive” youthful offenders into the adult system, thus leaving the discretion entirely in the hands of prosecutors. Another step would be to make juvenile records and proceedings as open as those in adult criminal cases.

Although in recent years more than 40 states, including California, have enacted measures aimed at curbing violent juvenile crimes, McCollum’s bill “goes way beyond what states are doing,” said Rep. Melvin L. Watt (D-N.C.).

According to law enforcement data, the number of youths prosecuted as adults each year has increased more than 70% during the last decade. In all, some 8,000 children now are housed with adults in jails and prisons around the country.

The vast majority of juvenile offenders are tried in state courts, in part because prosecutors face numerous legal and bureaucratic hurdles before they are allowed to try youths as adults in federal courts.

McCollum’s bill would remove most of those hurdles.

Times staff writer Max Vanzi in Sacramento contributed to this story.