News Analysis - Ruling Reflects Rethinking on Juvenile Justice - NYTimes.com The Supreme Court's ruling on Monday barring mandatory life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder was the sharpest indication to date of a shift in how the American judicial system views young felons - from irredeemable predators to victims of circumstance with a potential for rehabilitation. The change, manifest in court decisions starting in 2005, is a result of a confluence of factors: a drop-off in the crack-related crime wave that began in the late 1980s and that led states to move violent juveniles into the adult system and create mandatory prison terms for some crimes; an explosion in scientific research on adolescent brain development; a desire to cut costs by reducing prison populations; and the frustration of juvenile judges with mandatory sentencing. Together, experts say, the developments seem to be opening a new chapter in juvenile justice only two decades after a markedly different approach took firm hold. "What we are seeing is a very stark and important rethinking of how we treat juvenile criminal offenders," said Marsha Levick, who co-founded the nonprofit Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia in 1975. For years we were trying to convince the courts that kids have constitutional rights just like adults. Now we realize that to ensure that kids are protected, we have to recognize that they are actually different from adults. That sense of difference has fueled the Supreme Court decisions of the past seven years - first a ruling that barred the death penalty for juveniles in 2005; one that banned life in prison for juveniles convicted of crimes other than homicide in 2010; and now Monday's ruling that rendered invalid state laws requiring youths convicted of homicide as well to die in prison. That decision will lead to resentencing hearings for about 2,000 convicts - some of them now well into middle age - in more than two dozen states. All of the recent rulings placed emphasis on research showing that the less-formed brains of the young make them less morally culpable and more capable of change later. So condemning them to die in prison, advocates assert, ignores key advances in scientific understanding. Alison Siegler, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the court had held in the past that sentencing defendants to death required special care and that now the justices were saying, "Not only is death different but youth is also different." Monday's opinion by Justice Elena Kagan did not outlaw all life sentences without parole for juveniles but discouraged it, stating that given all that the court had learned in recent cases "about children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon." Lower courts are likely to heed this to some extent. Whether state legislatures will change their sentencing laws, however, remains to be seen. But some believe they will. Irene Sullivan, who recently retired after 12 years as a juvenile and family court judge in Clearwater, Fla., said much of the mandatory sentencing of juveniles had been an unintended consequence of legislation aimed at adults. "These cases are a recognition of the fact that we are at a level of objective scientific certainty with the brain science that calls for policy changes," she said. Juvenile justice in the United States has long been on a roller coaster. Gail Garinger, the child advocate for Massachusetts and a former juvenile judge there, said that in the first quarter of the 20th century, nearly every state set up a juvenile court system to treat children differently. But mostly, it was a cruel network of "training schools" in which youths were subject to the whims of wardens. Starting in the late 1960s, she said, when the Supreme Court was expanding the rights of adult criminals, juveniles benefited and were increasingly treated like adults. But in the late 1980s, that changed again with spiking homicide rates and tough-on-crime legislation. From 1985 to 1993, as the crack epidemic spread and youth unemployment grew, juvenile homicide rates tripled. Over the next five years, nearly every state changed its laws to be able to charge and sentence the most violent juveniles as adults.