Young Lawbreakers Face Tough Penalties Bipartisan Measure Prepared; Likely To Reach Governor Quickly

The Legislature on Friday prepared to send the governor a measure marking a major shift in the state’s treatment of juvenile offenders - a bill to lock up violent older offenders in adult prisons and get tougher with younger lawbreakers.

After weeks of talks and occasionally angry confrontation, House and Senate negotiators agreed on a final, bipartisan measure to be put to a vote of each house before the session’s scheduled Sunday adjournment. The bill, HB3900, is expected to sail through both of the Republican-controlled houses.

Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, whose staff was part of the discussions leading to the legislation, is expected to sign the bill, which will cost an estimated $24 million in the coming two-year budget cycle beginning July 1, and $43 million in the following biennium.

Among its impacts will be to send an estimated 155 additional 16- and 17-year-olds a year into adult prisons, backers said. About 90 older teens now are jailed in the adult system each year.

“The system we have now simply doesn’t work,” House Law and Justice Chairman Larry Sheahan, R-Rosalia, said before he and five other conferees signed the bill. There are too many kids using guns to commit crimes and too many who think the system “is just a joke,” he said.

“The winner is public safety,” added Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, another conferee.

Others noted that along with tougher sentences, the measure contains programs for “early intervention” to steer young offenders away from crime, and programs to teach offenders to read and finish high school.

Among the bill’s major provisions:

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds charged with even a first violent offense would automatically be tried in adult courts and if convicted, jailed in adult prisons. The offenses include drive-by shootings, first-degree robbery and child rape, first-degree burglary with a previous conviction, and any crime in which the offender was armed with a firearm. Current law sends into the adult system 16- and 17-year-olds who commit extremely serious crimes such as murder or are chronic violent offenders. The measure also would require that 16- and 17-year-olds in adult prisons be kept separate from adult inmates.

Tougher punishments for other juvenile offenders by scrapping the complicated point system used to calculate levels of punishment, in favor of a simpler sentencing plan. More emphasis would be placed on criminal history and the nature of the crime than on the offender’s age and frequency of the particular offense.

A juvenile’s felony record would no longer be cleared when he or she reaches adulthood, but would be carried forward and used to determine his or her sentence for adult crimes.

Parents of juvenile offenders would be required to participate in juvenile court proceedings or face contempt of court citations.