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“Let's Change the Law”: Arkansas and the Puzzle of Juvenile Justice Reform in the 1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2016

David S. Tanenhaus  and
Eric C. Nystrom
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[Governor Tucker] should also propose that juveniles be charged as adults more often. Such laws sound harsh. They are. Right now, they need to be. This is known as protecting the public safety. As deterrence. Until that improbable day when social scientists pinpoint the cause of crime, punishment is the best answer. Sure, swift punishment. Word will get around.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 10, 1994.

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Articles
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Law and History Review , Volume 34 , Special Issue 4: Digital Law and History , November 2016 , pp. 957 - 997
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2016 

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References

1. Miller v. Alabama, 2012, 13–14. http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/10-9646.pdf (May 28, 2015). In the petition for writ of certiorari, filed on March 21, 2011, Stevenson had asserted that “in most states where children fourteen and younger have been sentenced to life without parole, the legislatures have never expressly authorized life without parole sentences for young children; such sentences are a byproduct of legislation expanding the susceptibility of juveniles to adult prosecution (p. 3).” For an overview of juvenile without life parole sentencing, see Ashley Nellis, A Return to Justice: Rethinking Our Approach to Juveniles in the System (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 59–60.

2. Between 1990 and 1996, the District of Columbia and forty states passed laws to make it easier to prosecute minors in adult court. Jeffrey Fagan and Franklin E. Zimring, eds. The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to Criminal Court (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 2; Patricia Torbet, Richard Gable, Hunter Hurst IV, Imogene Montgomery, Linda Szymanski, and Douglas Thomas, States Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime: Research Report. (Washington, DC: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 1996); Shay Bilchik, Juvenile Justice Reform Initiatives in the States: 1994–1996 (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1997); and Patrick Griffin, Patricia Torbet, and Linda Szymanski, Trying Juveniles in Adult Court: An Analysis of State Transfer Provisions (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice, 1998). By 1996, every state had also passed some version of mandatory sentencing. Marc Mauer, “The Causes and Consequences of Prison Growth in the United States,” in Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences, ed. David Garland (London: Sage Publications, 2001), 6.

3. Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014), 265; and Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005).

4. Graham v. Florida, 510 U.S. (2010).

5. Stevenson, Just Mercy, 256–274.

6. Miller v. Alabama, 2012, 14–15 (June 2, 1015).

7. Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. (2012). The Court recently held that this holding is retroactive. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. (2015). Justice Alito still rejects these holdings. See Mark Joseph Stern, “Sore Losers: Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are Still Trying to Keep Juvenile Offenders Behind Bars for Life,” Slate, May 23, 2016. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/05/samuel_alito_and_clarence_thomas_are_sore_losers.html (June 17, 2016).

8. Franklin E. Zimring, “The Power Politics of Juvenile Court Transfer in the 1990s,” in Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice, ed. Franklin E. Zimring and David S. Tanenhaus (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 45.

9. For an illuminating case study of juvenile justice lawmaking in Pennsylvania and Washington State during this period, see Schlossman, Michael B. and Welsh, Brandon C., “Searching for the Best Mix of Strategies: Delinquency Prevention and the Transformation of Juvenile Justice in the ‘Get Tough’ Era and Beyond,” Social Service Review 89 (2015): 622–52Google Scholar.

10. Our conservative estimate is that the fifty states passed between 1,000 and 1,500 juvenile justice laws during the 1990s, Nystrom, Eric C. and Tanenhaus, David S., “The Future of Digital Legal History: No Magic, No Silver Bullets,” American Journal of Legal History 56 (2016): 150–67Google Scholar.

11. Ibid.

12. Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct., 2455, 2461 (2012). See Ark. Code. Ann. Sec. 5-4-104(b) (1997).

13. Ibid., 2462. Ala. Code. Sec. 12-15-34 (1977).

14. See, for example, Erik Eckholm, “Teen Gangs are Inflicting Lethal Violence on Small Cities,” New York Times, January 31, 1993. On Clinton and crime policy, see Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 337–40; and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Revised ed. (New York: The New Press, 2012), 56–57.

15. Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2005), 149.

16. Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock, directed by Marc Levin (Home Box Office, 1994) and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Home Box Office, 1996).

17. Torbet et al., States Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime, 53.

18. Ibid., 53, 58.

19. Nystrom and Tanenhaus, “The Future of Digital Legal History.”

20. We accessed law review articles through HeinOnline (http://home.heinonline.org/);, and state cases via LexisNexis (http://www.lexisnexis.com/). We accessed the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via NewsBank (http://infoweb.newsbank.com/); and the Arkansas state legislative materials at http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/2015/2015R/Pages/Previous%20Legislatures.aspx (accessed June 23, 2015). We recognize that it is unorthodox to footnote the digital databases from which we accessed digitized copies of published sources, but we do so here to help fully reveal the importance of digital tools in every aspect of our work.

21. Walker v. Arkansas Department of Human Services, 291 Ark. 43 (1987). The court overturned its ruling in Ex Parte King, 141 Ark. 213 (1919), which held that juvenile courts were a “local concern” because county courts had jurisdiction over child welfare matters. In Walker, the Court acknowledged, “Juvenile matters today represent a major field of law with a statewide and nationwide social importance which preclude them from constituting an area of merely ‘local concern’“(49). Therefore, Arkansas needed to establish a new constitutional foundation for its juvenile justice system. For a brilliant analysis of the changing intergovernmental role of welfare administration in the twentieth century, see Karen M. Tani's States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935–1972 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

22. Due Process Rights and Legal Procedures in Arkansas's Juvenile Court (1980) and Arrest and Disposition of Juveniles in Arkansas Circuit Court (1983). See, e.g., https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/118167NCJRS.pdf (June 23, 2015).

23. Her writings included the important article, “Children Under the Law,” Harvard Educational Review 43 (1973): 487–514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Due Process, Georgetown University Law Library Blog, 2014. https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/dueprocess/2014/07/09/1991-oral-history-interview-with-hillary-rodham-clinton-focusing-on-her-career-in-legal-services-now-available-online/ (June 29, 2015); and Hillary Clinton, Living History (New York: Scribner, 2003), 62–100.

24. Martin Guggenheim, What's Wrong with Children's Rights? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), ix.

25. McDonough, T. James, “The Juvenile Court and Judicial Reform in Arkansas,” Arkansas Law Review 22 (1968–69): 17–42 Google Scholar; and David S. Tanenhaus, The Constitutional Rights of Children: In re Gault and Juvenile Justice (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011).

26. Mlyniec, Wallace J., “Juvenile Delinquent or Adult Convict—The Prosecutor's Choice,” The American Criminal Law Review 14 (1976–77): 32 Google Scholar.

27. Crary, Don, “A New System of Juvenile Justice,” Arkansas Lawyer 20 (1986): 176 Google Scholar.

28. Walker v. Arkansas Department of Human Services, 291 Ark. 43 (1987).

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 51

31. Chief Justice Jack Holt, Jr., “Major Developments Fiscal Years, 1987–1988,” 4 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/115505NCJRS.pdf (June 23, 2015).

32. Franklin E. Zimring, Máximo Langer, and David S. Tanenhaus, eds. Juvenile Justice in Global Perspective (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

33. Tapio Lappi–Seppälä, “Juvenile Justice without a Juvenile Court,” in Juvenile Justice in Global Perspective, ed. Franklin E. Zimring, Máximo Langer, and David S. Tanenhaus (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 63–117.

34. Weijian Gao, “The Development and Prospect of Juvenile Justice in the People's Republic of China,” in Juvenile Justice in Global Perspective, 121–144.

35. Diane D. Blair and Jay Barth, Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule? 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).

36. Walker v. Arkansas, 50. In States of Dependency, Tani analyzes how the New Deal triggered the intergovernmental restructuring of the logic and administration of social services.

37. Walker v. Arkansas, 52.

38. Quoted in Donna L. Gay, “Juvenile Justice: Starting with a Clean Page,” Arkansas Lawyer 22 (1988): 203.

39. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Courts in Arkansas: Report and Recommendations (Little Rock, Ark.: The Commission, 1989), 8 (photocopy in authors’ possession).

40. Patricia McFall, “A Study of Regional Juvenile Detention Needs in Phillips, Monroe and Lee Counties, Arkansas,” prepared for the Multi-Jail Commission, January, 1983. http://www.ncjj.org/pdf/McFall_Study.pdf (June 23, 2015).

41. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Courts in Arkansas, 19.

42. Holt, “Major Fiscal Developments,” 4–5.

43. Gay, “Juvenile Justice,” 203.

44. Ibid., 203.

45. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Courts in Arkansas, 10.

46. Kay Goss, The Arkansas State Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 239.

47. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Courts in Arkansas, 24, 32–34.

48. Ibid.

49. Sklor, Daniel L. and Tenney, Charles W., “Attorney Representation in Juvenile Court,” Journal of Family Law 4 (1964): 77–98 Google Scholar.

50. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Courts in Arkansas, 30. Also see Boyce, Allison, “Choosing the Forum: Prosecutorial Discretion and Walker v. State,” Arkansas Law Review 46 (1993–94): 989–990 Google Scholar.

51. Ark. Code Ann. Sec. 9-27-318(b)(1) (Michie Supp. 1991).

52. On reverse transfer, see Barry C. Feld, “Legislative Exclusion of Offenses from Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: A History and Critique,” in The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice, 120–22.

53. Ibid.

54. These were: the seriousness of the offense, and whether violence was employed by the juvenile in the commission of the offense; whether the offense was part of a repetitive pattern of adjudicated offenses that would lead to the determination that the juvenile was beyond rehabilitation under existing rehabilitation programs, as evidenced by past efforts to treat and rehabilitate the juvenile and the response to such efforts; and the prior history, character, traits, mental maturity, and any other factor that would reflect on the juvenile's prospects for rehabilitation.

55. See, for example, Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 181–229.

56. David S. Tanenhaus, “The Evolution of Waiver out of the Juvenile Court,” in The Changing Border of Juvenile Justice, 13–14.

57. Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815 (1988).

58. Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989).

59. Bureau of Legislative Research, 2014. http://www.dfa.arkansas.gov/offices/budget/budgetRequests/0011_blr.pdf (July 1, 2015).

60. Kathryn C. Fitzhugh, Arkansas Legislative History Research Guide, 2001. http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/swall/bulletin/fall01/arkleghistory.html (June 25, 2015).

61. We used the Jaccard similarity method to compare pairs of documents based on five word overlapping phrases (shingles). See Nystrom and Tanenhaus, “The Future of Digital Legal History” for further technical details. All comparison pairs scored rather low in this test; the top scores among them, which resulted from comparisons of the 1991 Arkansas language with several laws passed by the state of Tennessee, had seized upon language of “severability” inserted by both states in their respective laws.

62. Specifically, we weighted single word terms using the term frequency over inverse document frequency (TFIDF) measure and then compared the documents using the cosine similarity technique. Our corpus, in this case, was all three page chunks from all states in the years 1990–2001 that contained the term “juvenile.”

63. Later we also ran a preliminary comparison of the 1991 Arkansas law with session laws from 1985–1989, which had been downloaded but not controlled for quality and were, therefore, not part of our data set. This preliminary comparison (a single term TFIDF cosine comparison) highlighted some similarities with laws passed in Ohio in 1985 and 1991, in Colorado in 1987, and in Mississippi in 1986. Manual examination of these earlier laws suggests that the Arkansas's 1991 law contained both substantive and procedural similarities about the prosecution of adolescent offenders in criminal court. These laws, we suspect, foreshadowed the avalanche of transfer legislation during the peak years of 1993–1996. We need, however, to do more research to test this proposition more fully.

64. See, for example, The Report of the Virginia State Crime Commission, 2008. http://leg2.state.va.us/dls/h&sdocs.nsf/By+Year/HD122009/$file/HD12.pdf (January 28, 2016).

65. Jonathan Simon, Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Franklin E. Zimring, “The Power Politics of Juvenile Court Transfer in the 1990s,” Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice ed. by Franklin E. Zimring and David S. Tanenhaus (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 45–47. Also see Angela J. Davis, Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

66. Arkansas Commission on Juvenile Justice, “Juvenile Courts in Arkansas,” 38.

67. David S. Tanenhaus, Juvenile Justice in the Making (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

68. Walker v. State, 309 Arkansas 23 (1992), 24.

69. Ibid., 25.

70. “Choosing the Forum,” 992–993.

71. Feld, “Legislative Exclusion of Offenses,” 120.

72. For the current version of the form, see State of Arkansas Criminal Information, 2007. https://courts.arkansas.gov/system/files/chacov_fdf.pdf (June 29, 2015).

73. “Choosing the Forum,” 994.

74. He cited People v. Davenport, 43 Colo. App. 41, 602 P. 2d 871 (1979); Gray v. State, 6 Md. App. 677, 253 A. 2d, 395 (1969); Williams v. State, 459 So. 2d. 777 (Miss. 1984); Dicus v. Second Judicial Dist. Court, Etc., 97 Nev. 273, 625 P. 2d 1175 (1981); and Worthy v. State, 253 Ga. 661, 324 S.E. 2d 431 (1985).

75. Metcalf v. Commonwealth, 156 N.E. 2d 649 (Mass. 1959).

76. Walker v. State, 24.

77. Ibid., 29.

78. Kagan wrote, “But the mandatory penalty schemes at issue here prevent the sentencer from taking account of these central considerations. By removing youth from the balance—by subjecting a juvenile to the same life-without-parole sentence applicable to an adult—these laws prohibit a sentencing authority from assessing whether the law's harshest term of imprisonment proportionately punishes a juvenile offender.” Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 2466.

79. Walker v. State, 30. Also see Arkansas Judiciary, Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor, 2016. https://courts.arkansas.gov/rules-and-administrative-orders/court-rules/rule-38-special-responsibilities-prosecutor-0 (June 29, 2015).

80. Walker v. State, 30. In Arkansas, prosecutors have rarely been disciplined. See, for example, this September 11, 2014, article in the Arkansas Times http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/prosecutors-have-all-the-power/Content?oid=3452595 (June 29, 2015).

81. Walker v. State, 30.

82. Feld, “Legislative Exclusion of Offenses,” 114.

83. House Bill 1755, March 15, 1991. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1991/R/Acts/903.pdf (June 30, 2015).

84. Zimring, “American Youth Violence,” 12.

85. Barth, Jay, “Arkansas’ Juvenile Crime Special Session: An Election Season Success with Forewarning for Arkansas Politics,” Comparative State Politics 15 (1994): 19–27 Google Scholar. For analysis of the history and use of the sociological concept of a “moral panic,” see Kenneth Thompson, Moral Panics (London: Routledge, 1998); and Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002). In Rethinking Juvenile Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 10, Elizabeth S. Scott and Laurence Steinberg classified juvenile crime policy during the 1990s as a moral panic because “politicians, the media, and the public reinforce[d] each other in an escalating pattern of alarmed response to a perceived social threat.”

86. David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 158.

87. For an introduction to the literature on the role of the news media in shaping racialized perceptions of youth crime during the 1980s and 1990s, see Moriearty, Perry L., “Framing Justice: Media, Bias, and Legal Decisionmaking,” Maryland Law Review 69 (2010): 850–909 Google Scholar.

88. See, for example, Terry Lemons and Jane Fullerton, “‘The Kids Have the Hammer Hanging Over Their Head’: Colorado Targets Violent Offenders with New Tougher Laws,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 13, 1994, 1A. In 1997, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention published a case study of Colorado's reforms, see Bilchik, Juvenile Justice Reform Initiatives in the States, 1994–1996, 51–58.

89. Jane Fullerton and Terry Lemons, “The Kids Think the System is a Joke: With Youth Crime Rising, State Puts Juvenile Justice System Under the Microscope,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 13, 1994, 1A; and Jane Fullerton and Terry Lemons, “Youth Crime Grows into National Terror,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 14, 1994, 1A.

90. Fullerton and Lemons, “The Kids Think the System is a Joke.”

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid.

93. Ibid.

94. Leveritt, Mara, “Are ‘Voices for Justice’ Heard?: A Star-Studded Rally on Behalf of the West Memphis Three Prompts the Delicate Question,” University of Arkansas Law Review 33 (2010–11): 137–60Google Scholar; and Mara Leveritt, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (New York: Atria Paperback, 2002).

95. Fullerton and Lemons, “Youth Crime Grows into National Terror,” 1A.

96. Mike Rodman, “Youth Crime a Siren's Song for Legislators School Fund Formula Can Wait, Tucker Say,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 7, 1994, 1A.

97. Rachel O'Neal, “Crime Summit Gives Officers Voice in Debate,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 6, 1994, 1B.

98. Noel Oman, “Judiciary Panels Get Head Start on Session,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 16, 1994, 8A; and Noel Oman, “Crime War at Capitol Hits Week 2,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 22, 1994, 1A.

99. Edmund F. McGarrell reviews the “open system” literature in Juvenile Correctional Reform: Two Decades of Policy and Procedural Change (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988).

100. Scholars have described the history of juvenile justice in cyclical terms. See, for example, Thomas J. Bernard and Megan C. Kurlychek, The Cycle of Juvenile Justice, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

101. McGarrell, Juvenile Correctional Reform, 97–134; Simon Singer, Recriminalizing Delinquency: Violent Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 46–74; and Fox Butterfield's All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 226–27.

102. O'Neal, “Crime Summit,” 1B.

103. Rachel O'Neal, “Summit-Goers Concoct ‘Rich Brew’ of Crime-Fighting Suggestions,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 9, 1994, 1B.

104. There is an extensive literature about the creation of the image of the black criminal and urban history, see, for example, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). For studies that examine how conceptions of blackness affected the history of American juvenile justice, see Feld, Bad Kids (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); William S. Bush, Who Gets a Childhood? Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010); Victor Rios, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys (New York: NYU Press, 2011); Geoff K. Ward, The Black Child Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); and Miroslava Chávez-García, States of Delinquency: Race and Science in the Making of California's Juvenile Justice System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). For an analysis of media coverage of these issues in the 1990s, see Steve Macek, Urban Nightmares: The Media, The Right, and the Moral Panic over the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); and Moriearty, Perry L. and Carson, William, “Cognitive Warfare and Young Black Males in America,” Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 15 (2012): 281–313 Google Scholar.

105. Jim Brooks and Jim Kordsmeier, “I've Been Shot,” Caller Told Police,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette July 31, 1994, A1.

106. Brenda C. Bankston, “NLR Council to Lobby for Tougher Laws on Youth Crime,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 9, 1994, 5B.

107. “Welcome Special Session, Act Against Crime Now,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 10, 1994, 8B.

108. Elizabeth Caldwell, “N.C. Crime Session Focused on Prevention,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 15, 1994, 7A.

109. “24 Points in Tucker's Call for Special Legislative Session,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 10, 1994, 10A.

110. Elizabeth Caldwell, “Tucker Adding Prevention to Session's Agenda,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 12, 1994, 1B.

111. Meredith Oakley, “Lawmaker Sees Racism in Session,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 17, 1994, 11B.

112. Elizabeth Caldwell and Rachael O'Neal, “Bill Cuts Parental Strings on Police,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,” August 18, 1994, 1A. Also see Diane D. Blair and Jay Barth, Arkansas Politics and Government, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 207.

113. Rachel O'Neal, “Senate Lowers Age to 14 for Nine Adult Crimes,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 19, 1994, 1A.

114. Noel Oman, “Crime War at Capitol Hits Week 2,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 22, 1994, 1A.

115. Senate Bill 5, August 16, 1994, http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1993/S2/Acts/56.pdf (July 1, 2015).

116. These new excluded offenses were: kidnapping; battery in the second degree; possession of a handgun on school property; aggravated assault; terroristic acts; unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle; any felony committed with a firearm; soliciting a minor to join a criminal street gang; criminal use of a prohibited weapon; or a felony attempt, solicitation, or conspiracy; or conspiracy to commit any of the offenses that were already excluded. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1993/S2/Acts/40.pdf (July 1, 2015).

117. House Bill 1019, August 24, 1994. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1993/S2/Acts/40.pdf (July 1, 2015).

118. “Grading the Session: A Fine Start Toward a Safer State,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 29, 1994, 4B.

119. See, for example, Bilchik, Juvenile Justice Reform Initiatives in the States, 1994–1996.

120. Ibid., 6–7.

121. William J. Bennett, John J. DiIulio, Jr., and John P. Walters, Body Count: Moral Poverty … and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).

122. Franklin E. Zimring, “American Youth Violence: A Cautionary Tale,” in Choosing the Future for American Juvenile Justice, 19.

123. Sanders v. State, 423.

124. Ibid.

125. House Bill 1554, 1997. ftp:// www.arkleg.state.ar.us/bills/1997/HTM/HB1554.pdf (June 26, 2015).

126. Ibid.

127. House Bill 1556, 1997. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1997/R/Bills/HB1556.pdf (July 1, 2015).

128. House Bill 1343, 1997. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1997/R/Acts/1229.pdf (July 1, 2015).

129. Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct., 2445, 2461 (2012).

130. Thompson v. State, 330 Ark. 746 (1997).

131. Elizabeth McFarland, “High Court Gives Ruling on Juveniles: Make a Case for Children in Adult Court, Justices Say,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 12, 1997, B1.

132. Ibid., 753.

133. Ibid.

134. In 2008, Arkansas amended its constitution to provide for annual legislative sessions.

135. Westside School Shooting, The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, 2016. http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3717 (June 25, 2015).

136. “What is there to Say? The Shootings at Jonesboro,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 25, 1998, B10.

137. For an analysis of the rise and impact of racialized media coverage of youth crime during this period, see Moriearty, Perry, “Framing Justice: Media, Bias, and Legal Decisionmaking,” Maryland Law Review 69 (2010): 850–909 Google Scholar.

138. Michael Whitely and Rachel O'Neal, “Huckabee to Create Task Force to Revise Juvenile Justice Code,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 26, 1998, A1.

139. Linda Collier, “Adult Crime, Adult Time; Outdated Juvenile Laws Thwart Justice,” Washington Post, March 29, 1998, C1.

140. Jane Fullerton, “Justice Department Eyes Charging 2 Arkansas Boys,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 27, 1998, A1.

141. Kenneth Heard, “Governor Pitches Changing Laws, Campaigning in Jonesboro, He Vows Rules on Releasing Youth Offenders,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 29, 1998, B3.

142. David Firestone, “Arkansas Tempers a Law on Violence by Children: A Moderate Response to Schoolyard Killings,” New York Times, April 11, 1999, 20.

143. Noel Oman, “Nation to Train Its Eyes on State's Juvenile Justice System,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 26, 1998, A14.

144. Mike Huckabee, Kids That Kill (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1998). When Huckabee later ran for president in 2008, his critics questioned the appropriateness of a state governor profiting from a local tragedy. See, for example, Richard A. Serrano, “Huckabee Book Deal After School Tragedy Still Rankles,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2008. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/26/nation/na-huckabee26. (July 2, 2015).

145. Ray Pierce, “Go Slow on Juvenile Justice Legislation, Experts Tell Panel,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 2, 1998, B3.

146. Ibid.

147. The working group included two juvenile court judges, one juvenile probation officer, one prosecuting attorney, one sheriff, and one police chief. Other members included representatives from the fields of counseling, education, law, social services, and medicine. Rachel O'Neal, “25 Chose to Review State Laws on Juveniles,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 27, 1998, A10.

148. Rachel O'Neal, “Extending Adult Penalties to Young Criminals Bad Idea, Experts Tell Panel,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 20, 1998, B1.

149. Ray Pierce, “Code Needs Teeth to Hold Juveniles Accountable, Dickey Says,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 21, 1998, B5.

150. Linda Satter, “Making the Time Fit the Crime,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 29, 1998, A1.

151. For a contemporary assessment of the scholarly debate over the costs and benefits of blended sentencing, see The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice, 45–82, 145–80, 407–23.

152. Act 1192 of 1999. http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/1999/R/Acts/Act1192.pdf (July 2, 2015).

153. David Firestone, “Arkansas Tempers a Law on Violence by Children,” New York Times, April 11, 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/11/us/arkansas-tempers-a-law-on-violence-by-children.html?pagewanted=all (January 6, 2016).

154. Ibid.

155. Podkopacz, Marcy R. and Feld, Barry C., “The Back-Door to Prison: Waiver Reform, Blended Sentencing, and the Law of Unintended Consequences,” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 91 (2000–2001): 997–1072 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156. For an overview of President Clinton's efforts to use federal legislation to crack down on youth crime, see Nellis, A Return to Justice, 52–53.

157. Zimring and Tanenhaus, Choosing the Future, 216–33.

158. Researchers, for example, have used regression analysis to isolate specific changes in the state laws, which have affected juvenile incarceration rates: National Juvenile Justice Network, “The Comeback States: Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States”, 2016. http://www.njjn.org/our-work/the-comeback-states-reducing-juvenile-incarceration-in-the-united-states (January 6, 2016).

159. See, for example, the Big Data for Social Good project, 2015. http://dssg.uchicago.edu/lid/ (January 6, 2016).

160. For example, creating individual bills as units of analysis, instead of the multipage chunks of text we used here, will require tedious tuning of the splitting algorithm to account for a wide range of printing styles found in session laws; however, if this is done, it will permit us to speak meaningfully about the number of relevant bills passed in any given year.

161. The peer-reviewed tutorials at The Programming Historian site are an exemplary example of training produced by technologically minded historians for their non-technical peers. http://programminghistorian.org (January 21, 2016).

162. “About Public.Resource.Org,” 2016. https://public.resource.org/about (January 21, 2016); Erik Eckholm, “Harvard Law Library Readies Trove of Decisions for Digital Age,” New York Times, October 29, 2015, A15; “Harvard Law School launches ‘Free the Law’ Project with Ravel Law to Digitize US Case Law, Provide Free Access,” Harvard Law Today, October 29, 2015. http://today.law.harvard.edu/harvard-law-school-launches-free-the-law-project-with-ravel-law-to-digitize-us-case-law-provide-free-access/ (January 21, 2016).

163. http://thomas.loc.gov (January 21, 2016), which has now been superseded by http://congress.gov. On scraping federal sites such as thomas.loc.gov, see Eric Mill, “A Modern Approach to Open Data,” August 20, 2013. http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/08/20/a-modern-approach-to-open-data/ (January 21, 2016). Note, however, that although some similar state level efforts exist, they can be more sporadic and uneven with regard to availability and coverage.