Young killers: Trying juveniles as adults helps neither them nor society

On Feb. 15, 2003, 13-year-old Craig Sorger from Ephrata, Wash., was found in the park, stabbed and cut 34 times, and beaten more than a dozen times with a tree branch.

The two boys who had invited Sorger to play that day, Lee Eakin and Evan Drake Savoie, were charged with murder upon discovery of blood on their clothing and inconsistencies in their stories.

They were 12 years old at the time.

How should our society handle such a difficult case?

The judge has determined that Eakin and Savoie will be tried as adults, because our juvenile system has no programs set up to sufficiently guarantee public safety. As such, they could receive up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

But the judge's solution isn't really a solution. Sure, simply locking the boys away will guarantee they don't harm anyone on the streets. For a while. But once they are released, who will they be?

They will be two adults who spent more than half of their lives in a prison environment. And let's face it, our penal system may temporarily remove criminals from our neighborhoods and punish them, but it does not do well at actually reforming or improving those in its care.

So after 15 years of prison, these two will be on the streets, suddenly responsible for getting jobs and places to live, for paying bills and driving cars, with access to alcohol and more. All of which they'll have no experience with because they were 12 when arrested.

Even forming healthy relationships will be challenging, since the extent of their adult social experience will have been guards and male inmates.

Are they really going to suddenly be safe and productive members of society?

Two studies from Florida, one by the University of Florida in 1996, and one by Dr. Craig A. Mason of Miami University in 2001, found that juveniles tried in adult courts and subjected to adult corrections are more likely to re-offend, and to commit more felonies, than those tried and treated through the juvenile corrections system.

Mason found the re-offense rate to be 90 percent versus 40 percent, adult versus juvenile systems, respectively.

Another consideration is that the areas of the brain that control such things as responsibility, long-term planning and weighing consequences aren't even fully developed at 12 years of age.

Not surprising then that, as reported in The Seattle Times, psychologists hired by both the defense and prosecution, as well as Grant County juvenile-court counselors, recommended the boys be tried as juveniles.

But say the judge is still right in that we don't have a program in place for these situations. The question then is, why not? Perhaps it is time for a juvenile "serious offender" program that can handle these crimes without simply shuffling them off to the adult court system.

As Dr. Mason noted, "Funding solutions that are proven effective makes sense, both in terms of saving taxpayer money and reducing the number of victims."

This is true not only for juveniles but for adults as well. Perhaps it is past time that the corrections pendulum in general starts swinging from a focus on punishment back toward a real, longer-term focus on preventing crime.

Granted, there's no solution that will turn every criminal into a model citizen. But certainly, we can do better than making the problem worse. Trying juveniles as adults is both counterproductive, and wrong.

And an adult system based on simply hiding away the scary, bad people and hitting them back because they hit us seems, well, a little juvenile.

Randy Henderson is a WSU senior. e-mail: NEXT@seattletimes.com