Alumnus Joshua Kingsley ’15 co-wrote an opinion piece in the New York Law Journal about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to raise the age of criminal responsibility.
Currently, state law requires that all 16- and 17-year-olds be tried in criminal court as adults, even for misdemeanors. Only North Carolina has such a rule in place. Eight states set the age of criminal culpability at 17, and the remaining forty states start at 18. Thirteen-, 14- and 15-year-olds who commit certain serious violent offenses can also be tried in criminal court, but as juvenile offenders.
The practical effect is that in 2015, nearly 17,000 16- and 17-year-olds were charged as adults in the five boroughs, with more than eight hundred sentenced to some sort of jail or prison time and nearly the same amount sentenced to “time served.”
There’s a good reason almost every other state does things differently.
The science of adolescent brain development indicates that youth are less culpable than adults; they don’t fully understand and appreciate the gravity of their conduct, and can’t restrain their impulses as well as adults.
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Aside from unfairly ascribing culpability, the process of adjudicating 16- and 17-year-olds as adults causes them particularized damage. The adult criminal justice system is highly traumatic. Youth subjected to arrest are placed in precinct holding cells and channeled through central booking alongside adults, who are often hardened criminals able to prey on younger offenders. Youth also feel more deeply the stigma of being labeled a criminal, as their sense of identity is still being formed. Not to mention the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction for a young person who hasn’t yet applied for college, hasn’t yet established themselves in a trade or profession, hasn’t yet settled in an apartment or home—real criminal convictions will diminish all of these opportunities.
And, of course, the impact of arresting, charging and trying 16- and 17-year-olds as adults falls disproportionately on black & Latino youth, who make up seventy-two percent of all arrests, and seventy-seven percent of all felony arrests, in that age group. In New York City, black and Latino youth account for more than ninety-five percent of prison sentences for 16- and 17-year-olds.
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In 2012, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, in conjunction with the Center for Court Innovation, established adolescent diversion parts—specialty court settings for 16- and 17-year-olds in criminal courts throughout the state. All five boroughs participate, but only misdemeanor charges are eligible. The parts divert youth to ensure that participants receive much needed social services, including counseling, mediation, employment readiness, and three to six months of drug or mental health treatment.
The Center for Court Innovation evaluated outcomes for “high risk” youths who participated in the adolescent diversion parts, and found statistically significant improvements in terms of lower re-arrest rates, and in particular re-arrests for violent felonies.
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The city should also act today to remove some of the collateral consequences that 16- and 17-year-olds face. For example, the New York City Housing Authority routinely initiates “termination of tenancy” proceedings against 16- and 17-year-olds following arrests for alleged low-level criminal conduct. This forces families to choose between losing public housing benefits or excluding their children from their apartment, even before a criminal conviction occurs. A significant liberalization in NYCHA termination policy is needed to avoid placing vulnerable children and families in that difficult situation.
And, of course, the city could finally fulfill its promise to move 16- and 17-year-olds off Rikers Island, and place them in a setting properly suited to housing young people and more easily accessible to their families.
Ultimately, the legislature needs to heed Gov. Cuomo’s call to raise the age of criminal responsibility. Until it does, New York City—in partnership with the courts, our five district attorneys and the defense bar—needs to push the envelope further in how we blunt the sharp edge of the criminal justice system for nonviolent teenagers.
Trying young people as adults, and sentencing them to long prison terms alongside adults, is unjust and unwise for these teenagers, for taxpayers and for the public. Raising the age raises us all.