May. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up this week its version of the legislation. The House bill would allow federal prosecution as adults of children as young as 13, and require adult prosecution for those 14 and older who are charged with certain violent crimes. It would require the states to prosecute children 15 and older as adults for those crimes, and it would ease the rules against mixing children with adult prisoners. The proposed Senate bill would allow children as young as 14 to be housed in adult federal prisons. That appears to bar keeping them in the same cells but would leave juveniles open to adult intimidation and assault in showers, recreation, on the way to eating and so on.
Juveniles do occasionally commit terrible crimes.
But the vast majority of kids who are arrested in this country have got in trouble for minor offenses or adolescent misbehavior. Putting children of that kind in prison with hardened adult criminals can lead to tragedy. Mark I. Soler, president of the Youth Law Center, gave some examples to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. She was an A student who had never been in trouble before. On her fourth night in jail a guard sexually assaulted her.