'OWING TO THE EXTREME YOUTH OF THE ACCUSED': THE CHANGING LEGAL RESPONSE TO JUVENILE HOMICIDE.

DILULIO, John; FOX, James Alan

In the late 1980's and early 1990's, an alarming increase in the number of juvenile homicides spurred academics like John Dilulio of Princeton and James Alan Fox of Northeastern University to predict a coming tidal wave of remorseless and morally impoverished youth. State legislatures heeded the call for tougher juvenile laws, and between 1990 and 1996, forty states passed laws to make easier to prosecute juveniles as adults. Many of these new laws removed discretion from juvenile court judges and gave more power to prosecutors, resulting in less individualized justice and more decisions based solely on the nature of these charged offense. During 1996 and 1999, forty-three states tinkered further with their transfer laws, increasing the numbers of children tried as adults and housed in adult prisons. According to Amnesty International, in 1998 nearly 200,000 children under eighteen were tried as adults; some 18,000 children were housed in adult prisons, 3500 of whom shared living spaces with adults. By the close of the twentieth century, the American juvenile court faced its greatest legitimacy crisis to date.