Letter to the Editor.

While I absolutely support Lynn Branham's position against incarcerating children in adult correctional facilities, I think she understates the case. If it is true that the American Correctional Association cannot be concerned with whether children should be waived into adult court, certainly it must be cognizant of how those "waivers" are applied.

Increasingly, children are not "waived" into adult court, but are "automatically transferred" by legislative classification combined with police and prosecutorial charging decisions. For thousands of children, there are no hearings to determine their maturity, or the appropriateness of the transfer. And correctional officials cannot assume that children prosecuted as adults have committed heinous offenses or have lengthy criminal records. Statutes and voter initiatives that: permit prosecutors to transfer at their discretion, mandate adult prosecution for minor drug offenses committed near schools or public housing, or require transfer for common offenses such as aggravated assault, are placing many children in adult courts who would not, in previous times, have been suggested for judicial waiver. As a result, children who, in the past, would not even have been detained prior to juvenile adjudication, are sentenced as adults to years of incarceration.

Moreover, children prosecuted as adults are disadvantaged compared to adults in the same felony courts. They have a difficult time cooperating with counsel, make poor witnesses on their own behalf and fail at showing remorse. The less mature they are, the worse the trial dynamics play out for them. Prosecutors, knowing that they have the upper hand, are exacting guilty pleas to prison terms from defense counsel daunted by the risks of facing long mandatory sentences after a trial.

Corrections professionals cannot blind themselves to the fact that children waived into adult court include the more vulnerable and less capable ones -- exactly those who, one would think, should not be mixed with adult offenders.

Malcolm C. Young

Executive Director

The Sentencing Project

Washington, D. C.