Christine Stolba

Christine Stolba is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative advocacy organization. In the following viewpoint she defends the practice of trying violent juvenile offenders in adult courts. Stolba traces the rise of juvenile courts in the nineteenth century, explaining that they were intended to help rescue minors from adult prisons and to help rehabilitate juvenile offenders. But in the 1960s, she maintains, two Supreme Court decisions stripped juvenile courts of much of their authority, and in the 1980s rising juvenile murder rates led the public to question their effectiveness. Stolba argues that the movement to try violent juvenile offenders as adults is an understandable result of the failure of juvenile courts. In addition, she maintains that juvenile courts have always sent their most dangerous juvenile...