I do believe, however, that the best predictor of adolescent violence is history. It is important that prosecutors and judges have accurate histories of the youth's conduct. It has become clear to most of us in the juvenile justice process that the confidentiality that was originally designed to protect the youth from being labeled as a career criminal, has served to keep different parts of the government ignorant about an offender's true history. As the new legislation in Congress makes clear, information sharing is an important step towards curing one of the major ills of the youth crime problem. It is therefore important to redesign the juvenile court process to allow for the accurate sharing and storage of juvenile records.
Young offenders have to be fingerprinted and photographed when they commit crimes.
These records have to be made available to law enforcement so that crimes can be solved and so that youths can be held accountable for their actions. Until last year, young offenders arrested for possession of loaded firearms could not be fingerprinted in New York. Photographs were also forbidden. Thus, law enforcement in New York could not place photos of gun toting teens into photo arrays to close out armed robberies. The New York Assembly, by refusing for over ten years to allow for the fingerprinting and photographing of young gun offenders, effectively created a qualified immunity for armed felons in the State of New York.