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So why is it that teens can be put into the adult court system and be treated and convicted like adults anyway? In Colorado the law that allows juveniles to be transferred into the adult Court system easily is Direct Filing 19-2-517 a policy that many other states have as well. Direct file did not become law in Colorado until the summer of 1993 also know as the "summer of violence." In 1993, the year of Denver's "summer of violence" there were 74 homicides in city. The year before there had been 95, and the year after there were 81 murders- and 81 again the year after that.

It was in the summer of 1993 that a special session of the legislature was called to address the issue of violence and fear in the community. The concern started, when a 5-year-old African-American boy took a stray bullet to the head in a June 9th drive-by shooting. A 10-month-old child was hit by an errant shot while visiting the Denver Zoo and a young boy was shot in the arm as he played on his aunts porch. A young man was murdered and his wife abducted on their way to the neighborhood grocery store. These events continued threw the summer. "Gang-bangers and their guns seemed to respect no boundaries."

The 1993 special session lasted ten days. Up until then, Colorado had a reputation as an enlightened pioneer in its treatment of juvenile offenders. Denver had one of the first few juvenile courts in the country. The goal was to rehabilitate more then to punish. That changed after 1993. The goal became public safety. Prosecutors won the right to "direct file" against juveniles in adult Court, instead of having to submit to a "transfer hearing," where a judge would determine weather the case should be moved out of the juvenile court to begin with. Those hearings virtually disappeared, and some four dozen juveniles ended up serving life sentences without parole.

Violent crime tends to dictate policy. The reason for the direct file was for public safety but shouldn't we also consider the people we are putting away for life? The purpose of juvenile court is not to punish but to rehabilitate, for example 16-year-old Dietrick Mitchell. It was late afternoon in August 1991 he had been driving around the northeast Denver and Aurora while drinking three forties and a six-pack of beer. He turned a corner and hit Danny Goetsch who had been walking near by. Danny died. Dietrick kept driving, he didn't slow, didn't stop but he did turn himself in tow days later. He was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence.

"Prosecutors call it appropriate prosecution of murder. Critics call it a prime example of how the adult Court system turns a teen who could have been rehabilitated into "throwaways." Carrie Thomson (one of his public defenders) say "had they kept him in the juvenile system he could have been treated for the alcoholism that caused the death, but decisions were made that this kid was a throwaway, that he didn't matter. To say that about a sixteen year old with alcohol problem is ridiculous. He was salvageable. But the minute you direct file you say he is unsalvageable.

In the end the question is should direct filing of juveniles be allowed? Forty years to life can be an appropriate sentence for a child but in reality it would never be okay to put a child away for life. They need to given another chance. There is always that possibility that they won't commit anymore crimes. In the end he system fails them by transferring them into the adult Court system instead of keeping them in the juvenile system and taking that chance away from them.