DATE: Friday, May 9, 1997                   TAG: 9705090717

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:  122 lines

HOUSE APPROVES BILL TO TRY VIOLENT JUVENILES AS ADULTS

Alarmed by the ``brutality and viciousness'' of juvenile crime, the House Thursday overwhelmingly passed a get-tough bill similar to a Virginia law that orders adult trials for violent Americans barely into their teens.

The bill, if enacted, would bring about a sweeping change in federal handling of juvenile crime, ending the notion that violent offenders of 15, 14 or even 13 should be treated as youngsters and their offenses considered childhood misdeeds.

The vote was 286-132, with 77 Democrats joining 209 Republicans in supporting the crackdown. Voting against it were 122 Democrats, nine Republicans and one independent.

Americans are ``shocked by the brutality and viciousness of crimes that are being committed by 13- and 14- and 15-year-olds, and they're equally shocked when they see a system that treats these juveniles as something less than the predators they seem to be,'' said Rep. George Gekas, R-Pa.

Both the Clinton administration and the Republican-led Congress wanted to impose severe treatment on some juvenile offenders. But the administration did not support this measure, largely because it did not include money for crime prevention and did not require that child safety locks be provided with firearm purchases.

The issue now goes to the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee is preparing to work on a bill by chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that also envisions more adult trials of juvenile offenders.

The House bill concerns federal crimes. But it also tries to persuade states to transform their juvenile justice systems by offering $1.5 billion in incentive grants over three years.

To be eligible for the money, states would have to, among other things, try 15-year-olds as adults for serious violent crimes, require that open criminal records be established for minors after a second offense and ensure there are escalating penalties for every juvenile crime.

``I'd be really surprised if we didn't qualify for some of this money because we were way out ahead on a lot of this,'' said Don Harrison, spokesman for the Virginia attorney general.

Virginia is ahead of the nation. It passed new get-tough-on-kids-who-do-crime laws during the 1996 General Assembly session after a yearlong bipartisan effort.

When Gov. George F. Allen signed the reform package into law, he hailed it as the final payoff in Virginia's efforts to reduce crime, an endeavor that began earlier in his administration with the abolition of parole.

Reforms here keep teen-age criminals in jail longer and treat more of them as adults.

It's early to tell how well Virginia's tougher system is really working. The Washington Post reported last month that nearly 10 months after legislators gave prosecutors the power to try many more juveniles as adults, it mostly hasn't happened. Since July, the Post said, there have been only slight increased in the numbers of juveniles being transferred to circuit courts.

Under the federal bill, adult trials of youths as young as 14 would become routine for federal crimes, including murder, rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery and major drug offenses - and conspiracy to commit those crimes. To keep such a case in juvenile court, the attorney general would have to certify that public safety interests would be best served by doing so.

Thirteen-year-olds could also be transferred to adult federal court if the attorney general approved the move.

The administration had sought legislation to clear away legal roadblocks to trying juveniles as adults, but it wanted more flexibility in letting prosecutors decide.

``The essence of what we're doing today is to try to fix a juvenile justice system so the very bad are removed from society because they commit the most heinous of crimes that we have here,'' said Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., the bill's chief author. ``We need to be tough with them.''

Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., said that as mayor of Charlotte, N.C., ``I attended more funerals of 13-, 14- and 15-year-old children than I care to remember. Senseless murders. And young people who did these things that I would talk to afterwards had absolutely no remorse for their actions. This bill helps our system deal with these problems.''

While the Clinton administration's proposed bill and McCollum's bill had much in common, the administration opposed the GOP legislation in part because it lacked money for prevention and intervention.

Republicans said that would be handled in other legislation, and the House defeated, 224-200, a Democratic substitute that would have devoted 60 percent of the $1.5 billion to prevention.

Many Democrats joined with Republicans to overwhelmingly defeat other Democratic amendments that would have weakened the bill's focus on tough enforcement.

Statistics tell the story of the rise in juvenile crime.

Minors were responsible for 14 percent of all violent crime in 1995, up from 10 percent in 1980, a recent Justice Department report found. In 1995, juveniles committed 9 percent of murders, 15 percent of forcible rapes, 20 percent of robberies and 13 percent of aggravated assaults, it said.

The situation could become much worse in the next few years because of an expected explosion in the number of children reaching potential crime-committing ages. MEMO: Staff writer Sue Robinson contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: Graphics

HOW THEY VOTED

A ``yes'' vote is a vote to pass the bill.

Herbert H. Bateman, R-Va. Yes

Owen B. Pickett, D-Va. Yes

Robert C. Scott, D-Va. No

Norman Sisisky, D-Va. Yes

Eva Clayton, D-N.C. No

Walter Jones Jr., R-N.C. Yes

VIRGINIA LAW

Among the provisions in Virginia's law, which took effect in

July:

Anyone 14 or older accused of murder or aggravated malicious