Investigators: Teen burglars do little time for their crimes

The 17-year-old who broke into Ralph Tuttle's Gun Store in Enumclaw knew what he was doing.

Tuttle showed us how the burglar cut through an exterior wall that faces a back alley. He had to go through layers of plywood covering an old window, plus more insulation on the inside.

"You'd have to get up and kick it," said Tuttle. "He'd have to stand up here and get his leg in there and do that."

Inside, the teen eluded the security system and, ignoring Tuttle's collector guns, took only what brings a fast buck on the street.

"We call them black guns or paramilitary style guns," said Tuttle. "They took a number of guns similar to this."

Tuttle said in all, 53 firearms were taken.

When police caught the teen, he confessed to two more burglaries.

King County's juvenile probation office recommended up to a year in jail. He got 90 days, but he was out in 52.

Which means for every gun he stole he wound up serving just one day.

"I don't understand it. I don't understand it," said Tuttle.

Another teen burglar admitted to burglarizing five homes in and around Seattle when he was barely 16. His sentence: 50 days. Just 10 days for every home he hit.

He's back before a judge on a sixth break-in and suspected of more, which is why he's landed on King County's top five list of juveniles flagged for prosecution under the new Repeat Burglar Initiative.

"We encourage the recycling of these offenders by the minimal sentences they get in juvenile court. What we're trying to do with this initiative is find the most prolific offenders. And a lot of them are kids who just haven't learned that lesson yet," said King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg.

Some wonder whether one 18-year-old burglar will ever learn his lesson. Colton Harris-Moore's been at it since he was 12 and has been caught at least six times. But he turned up just last week on surveillance tape on Orcas Island, suspected of busting open an ATM, hitting a restaurant, even stealing two airplanes.

Harris-Moore should still be in jail for wreaking havoc on Camano Island, but he escaped from a halfway house.

"Just to do it over and over and over again and it's just a repeated slap in the face of the whole island," said Josh Flickner of the Camano Island Chamber of Commerce.

The short sentences are no accident. They're set by the legislature. In fact, Washington is the only state where judges have to use what's called "determinate sentencing" for juveniles, a sentencing grid where the crime and prior offenses are plugged in to come up with a number.

Judges can go outside the grid but it rarely happens.

Rep. Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, is on the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission.

Appleton says at the juvenile level the goal is rehabilitation and the less time a teen spends in the juvenile system the less chance he or she will reoffend. Appleton says for the most part the current sentences make sense. She chairs the committee that evaluates sentences for juveniles and recommends changes to the legislature.

"I think some of them may be too light. I think that a lot of them are too strict, are too long. They're based on revenge not rehabilitation," said Appleton.

But when rehabilitation doesn't work, juvenile offenders grow up to become adult offenders.

That's what happened to serial burglar Maxwell Inthavong.

"He's 19, has four prior points, which means he has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 prior convictions," said King County Deputy Prosecutor Maurice Classen with the Repeat Burglar Initiative.

Inthavong is on his way to prison for more than three years after admitting to three attempted home break-ins since January.

"In and out, in and out, in and out, and now this is the first time he's really looking at serious time," said Classen.

Right now, the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission is reassessing how much time juveniles are getting. The commission is looking for ways to make sentences even shorter for budgetary reasons.