An epidemic of juvenile violent crimes endures. Why? The law presumes juveniles are intellectually and psychologically too immature to appreciate the wrongfulness of their violent ways and deserve leniency. But to borrow from Mr. Bumble in “Oliver Twist,” “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot.”

Violent juveniles have what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. characterized as the “bad man’s view of the law.” The justice elaborated, “If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict.” From the bad man’s vantage point, the law is reduced to “prophecies of what courts will do in fact.”

Violent, recidivist juveniles are a crime wave unto themselves. Their recidivism is fueled by law enforcement indulgence: pretrial diversion, rehabilitation fantasies, probation or reform school. They know how to game the system. They migrate to jurisdictions notorious for leniency. Word of mouth among juveniles travels at warp speed. Adult gangs recruit juveniles to do their dirty work, knowing that law enforcement will look the other way or concoct excuses for juvenile crime.

With all due respect, the U.S. Supreme Court has blundered in constitutionally shielding youths from condign punishment for violent felonies under the Eighth Amendment. Three reasons were advanced to justify the leniency in Miller v. Alabama (2012). First, the ruling states that children are immature and exhibit an “underdeveloped sense of responsibility (leading) to recklessness, impulsiveness and heedless risk-taking.” But that is not true. Juveniles are quite mature when it comes to evaluating the risk of punishment, just as they know the market price of illicit drugs. They are not ingenues. In law enforcement, better to be feared than loved.

The satirical lyrics from “West Side Story’s” “Gee, Officer Krupke” speak volumes:

“Dear kindly Judge, your Honor / My parents treat me rough / With all their marijuana / They won’t give me a puff / They didn’t wanna have me / But somehow I was had / Leapin’ lizards, that’s why I’m so bad! / Officer Krupke, you’re really a square / This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care! / It’s just his neurosis that oughta be cured / He’s psychologic'ly disturbed!”

Second, the ruling argues that children “are more vulnerable (than adults) to negative influences” and outside pressures, including from their family and peers; they have limited control over their environment and “lack ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings.” But that shortchanges free will. We all can defeat the irresistible by resisting. Many youths do it every day.

Third, the ruling asserts that “a child’s character is not as ‘well formed’ as an adult’s; his traits are ‘less fixed’ and his actions less likely to be ‘evidence of irretrievabl(e) deprav(ity).’” That may be true. Thousands of years of experience, however, have demonstrated that the human mind is unable to distinguish between juveniles who are irretrievably lost and those who are not. The safest and fairest course is to impose stiff prison sentences on all who have been convicted of violent felonies. Overdeterrence of criminality is superior to the risk of exposing the innocent to juvenile predation.

What about parents? They need accountability just like their offspring. Procreation is voluntary, not coerced. Adults should refrain from childbearing unless they are willing to take the time and effort to raise children properly by example and instruction. As employers are responsible for the wrongdoing of their employees, parents should be held criminally accountable for the crimes of their children. That will concentrate the mind wonderfully on abstaining from sexual promiscuity.

Innocent children of an irresponsible parent can be put up for adoption or raised by foster parents. Moreover, punishing the parent will arrest the epidemic of mal-parenting and deter future parental irresponsibility.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel to end the juvenile crime wave. The answer has been in plain view from the beginning of time.

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