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Juvenile Justice
Can young criminals be reformed? A growing number of states think so — but
not everyone is convinced.
By Carl Stoffers
2017

Do you think that some teenagers should be charged as adults when they commit a crime? While some
people believe that an offender should be punished harshly no matter their age, others believe that a
person’s age should be taken into consideration when they’re tried. In this informational text, Carl Stoffers
explores the controversial issue. As you read, take notes on how some young offenders have been
rehabilitated after committing a crime.

[1] Noah Schultz’s life was spinning out of control. At

17, he was already immersed in drugs and gangs
in his Portland, Oregon, neighborhood. When
someone cheated him on a drug deal, Schultz
decided to get revenge, tracking the man down
and beating him with a pistol, causing severe
bruising to his face.

That night in 2009 would be Schultz’s last day of

freedom for more than seven years. Within 24
hours he was arrested, charged with assault as an
adult, and held on $500,000 bail. He was
transferred between multiple adult jails, where "Untitled" by qimono is licensed under CC0
he endured extensive time in solitary
confinement — for his own protection, he was told.

“I couldn’t believe what happened so quickly,” Schultz says. “I’m sitting in this jail with a bunch of grown
men thinking: How did I get here? How did this happen?”

Schultz’s case is far from uncommon. He was housed in adult jails after his arrest because Oregon is
one of 27 states where prosecutors can charge 16- and 17-year-old offenders as adults if they choose.
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(Six states automatically charge 16-year olds and/or 17-year-olds as adults.)

[5] But recently, some states have begun making it harder to charge juveniles as adults and started to
focus more on rehabilitation. New scientific research and several Supreme Court rulings involving
juveniles and crime have prompted the states to act, reversing a “tough on crime” philosophy that led
to harsher penalties for young people who commit serious crimes.

“Legislators have finally started to realize that treating juveniles just like adults does more harm than
good,” says David DeMatteo, a professor of law at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

1. Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin charge 17-year-olds as adults; North Carolina charges as adults
people who are 16-years-old and older.

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 However, some victims’ rights groups and lawmakers are pushing back against the trend, arguing that
the worst criminals deserve harsh punishments no matter how old they are.

“Prison penalties fairly and systematically applied means less crime,” says U.S. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama and an outspoken critic of changing the juvenile
and adult justice systems.

Punishment, Not Rehabilitation

The idea of treating juveniles differently in the justice system has a long history. In the early 1800s,
special facilities to deal with juveniles were created in cities like New York and Chicago. These
“reformatories” housed kids deemed “juvenile delinquents.”

[10] The creation of the first juvenile court in 1899 in Illinois marked the beginning of the modern-day
juvenile justice system. Most states created their own juvenile courts in the following decades. These
courts were staffed by judges and prosecutors who were trained to use methods such as probation,
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restitution to victims, and occasionally incarceration to rehabilitate young people in trouble.

This system remained largely unchanged for most of the 20th century. But in the 1980s, juvenile crime
rates — especially for violent crimes — began to increase drastically, in part because of a nationwide
crack cocaine epidemic. This led many politicians, community leaders, and police officials to demand
action.

The government’s response was to crack down on crime, passing legislation in the early 1990s that
targeted juveniles and made it easier for prosecutors to seek stiff penalties in court.

“Once we got the harsh laws and sentencing guidelines, the system became about punishment and not
rehabilitation,” says Christina Gilbert, an attorney at the National Juvenile Defender Center, an
organization dedicated to juvenile legal defense.

Supreme Court Rulings

The shift toward punishment led to a ballooning juvenile prison population in the 1990s. And by 2000,
juveniles were regularly being sent into adult systems for crimes ranging from drug possession to
murder, further stressing overcrowded prisons.

[15] But in the new century, authorities began to rethink their approach. In several cases from 2005 to
2012, the Supreme Court ruled that both the death penalty and mandatory life sentences were
unconstitutional for juvenile offenders, citing the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual
punishment.”

The high court’s rulings also took into account new scientific research, including findings that the areas
of the brain that deal with decision making, impulsiveness, and consequences are often not fully
developed until people are in their 20s.

2. compensation for injury or loss

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 Studies have also shown that adolescents are more likely than adult offenders to respond to
interventions and grow out of delinquent behavior. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote of
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adolescents’ “diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change” in the 2012 majority opinion
banning mandatory life sentences for juveniles.

Counseling & College

Hernan Carvente says he was one of those teens who benefited from a second chance. He was two
days shy of his 16th birthday when he shot a rival gang member in Queens, New York, in 2008. After
the shooting, Carvente says he went home and saw his girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, and
decided that he wanted to turn his life around.

“I broke down when I saw her,” Carvente says. “It hit me that… I had thrown my life away.”

[20] Arrested and then sentenced to two-to-six years in prison for attempted murder, he served his time in
a juvenile facility because he was still 15 when the shooting occurred. Had he committed his crime just
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a few days later, he would have faced adult charges.

While in custody, Carvente received counseling and other support. He also began a college program.

Carvente, who served four years for the shooting, acknowledged that he deserved punishment for his
crime. But he’s grateful for the opportunities he was given while in custody. Now 25, Carvente earned a
bachelor’s degree and is planning to go to graduate school.

“If we put kids in situations where there’s mentors, where there’s love and support, they can turn their
lives around,” he says. “I’m proof of that.”

Recently seven states, including Illinois, Louisiana, and New Hampshire, passed laws barring anyone
under 17 from being automatically charged as an adult. North Carolina this summer decided to raise
the minimum age from 16 to 18, starting in 2020. And last year, Vermont decided to raise the minimum
age from 18 to 21. Many other states have started to favor rehabilitation over long prison sentences
for juveniles.

A ‘Grand Experiment’?
[25] Despite success stories like Carvente’s, some officials and victims’ rights groups say offenders like him
should be punished more severely, not less.

Last year, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, blocked bipartisan legislation that would have
prohibited states receiving federal money from jailing juveniles in adult prisons.

“If this grand experiment in criminal leniency goes awry, how many lives will be ruined?” Cotton asked,
while opposing the bill in Congress. “How many dead? How much of the anti-crime progress of the last
generation will be wiped away for the next?”

3. Culpability (noun): guilt or blame that is deserved

4. New York recently stopped automatically charging 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds as adults.

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 Cotton isn’t the only lawmaker who opposes changes. A measure to raise the age of criminal
responsibility in Texas from 17 to 18 failed to pass last year, and legislation to improve education in
Maryland’s juvenile system also failed.

And some victims’ rights advocates also warn against shifting away from punishing juvenile offenders.

[30] William G. Otis, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C., argues harsher justice — both at the juvenile and adult levels — is the best way to
reduce crime.

Otis points to the case of Wendell Callahan. After being arrested in Ohio at 17, Callahan was sentenced
to a long prison term for a drug conviction. But he gained early release after more than a decade in
prison, and less than two years later, Callahan murdered his ex-girlfriend and her two young children.
Otis says the case is proof that tough punishments are necessary.

“When people are incarcerated, they aren’t out in the street ransacking your home or slashing children
to death,” he says.

But many states continue to head in the opposite direction, including Oregon, which now bases its
juvenile justice approach on a model that emphasizes treatment, education, and rehabilitation.

Noah Schultz, the Portland teen arrested for assault, benefited from that approach. After his attorney
arranged a plea deal, Schultz was moved out of an adult jail to a juvenile center, where he served more
than seven years before his release in 2016. He earned two bachelor’s degrees while incarcerated and
now works with at-risk kids.

[35] “It was a struggle,” says Schultz, “but I was able to completely reinvent myself, and a lot of that is due to
having the opportunity to grow while I was incarcerated.”

From “Juvenile Justice: Can Young Criminals Be Reformed?” by Carl Stoffers. Published in THE NEW YORK TIMES UPFRONT, December 11, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by Scholastic, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

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 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. PART A: Which statement identifies the central idea of the text?

A. Juvenile offenders who are sent to adult prisons have a harder time reentering
society than their fellow adult prisoners.
B. Juvenile offenders shouldn’t be held accountable for their criminal actions, as it
has been proven that their brains aren’t fully developed.
C. While some people support harsher punishment for juvenile offenders, research
and personal stories show how rehabilitation can benefit young people.
D. The risk of rehabilitating rather than punishing juvenile offenders is too high, as
they might return to crime after their release from prison.

2. PART B: Which quote from the text best supports the answers to Part B?
A. “‘I couldn’t believe what happened so quickly,’ Schultz says. ‘I’m sitting in this jail
with a bunch of grown men thinking: How did I get here? How did this happen?’”
(Paragraph 3)
B. “And by 2000, juveniles were regularly being sent into adult systems for crimes
ranging from drug possession to murder, further stressing overcrowded
prisons.” (Paragraph 14)
C. “‘If we put kids in situations where there’s mentors, where there’s love and
support, they can turn their lives around,’ he says. ‘I’m proof of that.’” (Paragraph
23)
D. “‘When people are incarcerated, they aren’t out in the street ransacking your
home or slashing children to death,’ he says.” (Paragraph 32)

3. How do paragraphs 25-32 contribute to our understanding of the controversy surrounding

juvenile justice?
A. They explain the actions and opinions of people who are against the idea of
rehabilitating juvenile criminals rather than punishing them.
B. They provide proof that it’s too dangerous to rehabilitate criminals, as they’re
likely to return to crime.
C. They show how groups against rehabilitating criminals have control over the
juvenile justice system in a majority of states.
D. They provide evidence that criminals who spend more time in prison are less
likely to commit crimes when released.

4. How does the author’s discussion of specific juvenile offenders contribute to our
understanding of the juvenile justice system?
A. It emphasizes how the juvenile offenders were put in situations in which they
had no choice but to commit a crime.
B. It stresses that the juveniles committed minor crimes, showing how harshly the
juvenile justice system works.
C. It shows the mental and emotional abuse that juvenile offenders suffered in
adult prisons and their inability to work towards rehabilitation.
D. It shows how juvenile offenders benefitted from the classes and mentoring they
received while incarcerated.

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5. What connection does the author draw between how old offenders are and how they
should be treated?

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 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. In the text, the author discusses juveniles who are charged as adults. Do you think it’s fair to
juveniles to punish them in the same way that adults are punished? Why or why not? Do
you think a teenager understands the consequences of their actions as well as an adult
does?

2. How did two of the juveniles discussed in the text manage to make up for their crimes and
reenter society? What services do you think are most important to provide for incarcerated
youth, to make sure they don’t become repeat offenders?

3. How is the justice system changing to focus more on rehabilitating young offenders, rather
than punishing them? Why do you think our justice system has favored punishment over
rehabilitation in the past? Do you think punishing offenders achieves something that
rehabilitation cannot?