New York’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, spoke with courage and foresight when he called on legislators and officials to develop a plan to transfer teenagers who commit minor crimes into the family court system, where they would have more access to social services, instead of continuing to prosecute them as adults in criminal courts.
New York is one of two states that automatically try 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for minor offenses like vandalism or shoplifting. Tens of thousands of nonviolent young offenders who would likely be given community supervision elsewhere in the country are sentenced as adults every year in New York. These young people end up with criminal records that trap them at society’s margins and are more likely to become career criminals than children processed through the juvenile system.
As Judge Lippman has pointed out, treating adolescents as adults is both counterproductive and morally unjustified, given brain science showing that teenagers are often incapable of the judgments of adults.
New York’s approach has been out of step with most of the country since the 1960s, when it created the juvenile justice system under the Family Court Act. At the time, lawmakers, unable to agree on the age of criminal responsibility, set the age temporarily at 16, pending public hearings where research could presented. But the matter was never revisited. The only other state that still automatically tries 16-year-olds as adults is North Carolina, which is considering a change in policy.
Judge Lippman is pushing the state sentencing commission to come up with a reform bill for the Legislature’s 2012 session. Under his proposal, violent juveniles would still be prosecuted as adults. Meanwhile, he is moving forward with a pilot program that will establish several criminal courts to handle the cases of nonviolent 16- and 17-year-olds in less punitive ways. Processing teenage offenders in family court may initially cost more if the state provides the services these children need. But it could mean long-term savings by cutting recidivism and prison costs.