Buffalo – A diverse coalition of youth and community members rallied in Buffalo today to support Governor Cuomo’s plan to “Raise the Age” and reform New York’s juvenile justice system to create better outcomes for youth and public safety.
Young people with direct experience with the adult criminal justice system joined youth advocates and faith leaders to share their stories and advocate for the proposed reforms, which will reduce recidivism and ensure that youth do not end up in adult prisons.
“Law enforcement officials, child and youth advocates, parents, and young people all agree – adult prisons and jails and the adult criminal justice system are no place for 16 and 17-year-olds,” said Rosemary Rivera, Organizing Director for Citizen Action of New York. “This year, New York can do what’s best for young people and for public safety by raising the age.”
Support for the Raise the Age legislation has grown considerably in recent weeks, with advocates including Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, several county sheriffs, a coalition of notable philanthropists, union leaders, and national criminal justice experts all calling for reform.
Governor Cuomo outlined the comprehensive plan to reform New York’s juvenile justice system in his 2015-16 Executive Budget and the Assembly included the measures in its on-house budget on Tuesday. The proposed legislation includes a number of critical reforms including:
- Raise the overall age of juvenile jurisdiction to 18, consistent with other states.
- Raise the lower age of juvenile delinquency from age 7 to age 12 (except for murder offenses, which should be raised to 10);
- Ensure no youth 16 or 17 years old are placed in adult facilities. Youth placed as soon as December 2015 can begin to be placed in facilities run by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services;
- Move the majority of cases for 16 and 17 year olds to Family Court and create a new Youth Part in the adult system for youth who allegedly committed more violent crimes;
- Expand services, including alternatives to detention and incarceration, to keep youth in their communities and not locked up;
- Increase the age for youthful offender status to 21 and broaden eligible crimes, to better address the collateral consequences of court involvement and help youth become more successful adults.
The changes were unanimously recommended by the Governor’s Commission on Youth, Public, Safety & Justice – a group of legal, criminal justice, and social services experts Governor Cuomo tasked with providing clear recommendations on how to reform New York’s criminal and juvenile justice systems in 2014.
“More of the same one-size fits all criminal justice system won’t work for kids and won’t work for our communities,” said Rob Harris, CEO of the Youth Prison Prevention Project. “Those of us who work with young people every day know firsthand the power of educating youth and providing them with age-appropriate rehabilitative services. Raising the age will help turn more young people away from a life of crime and towards a life of active citizenship.
“Raising the age is the right thing to do and it’s what we as adults owe young people here in New York State,” said Pastor James Giles of Back to Basics Ministry. “With these reforms we can ensure that all children have a chance at improving their lives and having productive futures.”
“We can see that incarcerating our youth and zero tolerance does not work instead we are funnelling them through the schools right into the prisons. Programs like restorative justice that serve the need of the whole child and truly restore a community are proven to work and lead our children to learn from their mistakes and do better. We need to stop pushing our children out of schools down the fast track to prison and start to direct them to a brighter future full of educational opportunities and success,” said Angelica Rivera, Education Chair of Citizen Action.
“With juvenile justice moving toward community-based alternatives and with the point system making it more difficult for youth to enter juvenile detention facilities, it follows that we must make it harder for them to enter prisons as well. Raising the age of legal adulthood for youth is not extreme; indeed, it is conservative, as almost every state in the Union (except for New York and North Carolina) and most developed countries see 18 as the age at which one is considered an adult,” said Dr. Anthony J. Nocella II, Co-National Director of Save the Kids; Senior Fellow, Dispute Resolution Institute, Hamline Law School; and co-editor of “From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline”
“The fact that we are exposing our youth to the brutality and violence of our prison system is criminal and our criminal justice system needs to be held accountable for how it treats our countries future,” said John Washington, Community Organizer for PUSH Buffalo.
“Young people don’t need to be incarcerated with adults because they will become their next teachers and young people will learn how to be better criminals. Raising the age is a good thing because it will reduce recidivism,” said Paulette Chapman, Founder of Teens in Progress.
About the Raise the Age NY campaign:
Raise the Age NY is a public awareness campaign that includes national and local advocates, youth, parents, law enforcement and legal representative groups, faith leaders, and unions that have come together to increase public awareness of the need to implement a comprehensive approach to raise the age of criminal responsibility in New York State so that the legal process responds to all children as children and provides services and placement options that better meet the rehabilitative needs of all children and youth.
New York is one of only two states in the country (the other is North Carolina) that have failed to recognize what research and science have confirmed – adolescents are children, and prosecuting and placing them in the adult criminal justice system doesn’t work for them and doesn’t work for public safety.
Children who are prosecuted as adults are more likely to continue committing crimes in the future. Children who are treated as children are more likely to stay out of jail, and out of the justice system:
- Studies have found that young people prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system are 34% more likely to be re-arrested for violent or other crime than youth retained in the youth justice system.[i]
- A study comparing New York youth to young people in New Jersey who had committed similar felonies but were treated in different systems, found that the New York youth were more likely to recidivate.[ii] New York youth had higher re-arrest rates, higher re-incarceration rates, and a shorter time period to re-arrest than their New Jersey peers.[iii]
- A second study of 2,000 youth charged with robbery, burglary and assault in New York and New Jersey found that youth in New York were 85% more likely to be re-arrested for a violent crime.[iv]
- In 2013, the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission found that when the state began prosecuting 17-year-olds as juveniles, juvenile crime continued to decline. Moreover, between 2010 when the law changed, until 2013, the state experienced a 14% decrease in violent crime.[v] Contrary to what opponents had predicted, including 17-year-olds did not overload the juvenile justice system, nor did it increase juvenile offenses.[vi]
Research into brain development underscores that adolescents are in fact children and that the human brain is not fully formed until the age of 25:
- As the cognitive skills of adolescents are developing, adolescents’ behavior is often impulsive and they lack the ability to focus on the consequences of their behavior.[vii]
- Because the adolescent brain is still developing, the character, personality traits and behavior of adolescents are highly receptive to change; adolescents respond well to interventions, learn to make responsible choices, and are likely to grow out of negative or delinquent behavior.[viii]
Raise the Age NY is a campaign that supports raising the age of criminal responsibility for all children in New York to improve outcomes for children and public safety.
For more information about the Raise the Age campaign, visit www.raisetheageny.com.
Supporters of the statewide Raise the Age New York campaign include:
Lead group members:
Center for Community Alternatives
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York
Correctional Association of New York
Families Together in NYS
Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies
Herstory Writers Workshop
NAACP
Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy
The Children’s Agenda
The Children’s Defense Fund – New York
The Fund for Modern Courts
Westchester Children’s Association
Youth Represent
Additional supporters to date:
1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
32BJ SEIU
Alternatives for Battered Women
American Friends Service Committee (NY)
Amnesty International
Arab American Association of NY
Association for Community Living, Inc.
Association to Benefit Children
Harry Belafonte
Bronx Christian Fellowship Church
Bronx Clergy Roundtable
Brooklyn Community Services
Brooklyn Defender Services
Campaign to End the New Jim Crow
Casa Rochester/Monroe County, Inc.
Center for Children’s Initiatives
Center for Popular Democracy
Child Welfare Organizing Project
Children’s Village
Citizen Action of New York
City of Glen Cove Youth Bureau
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families
Coalition for Education Justice
Coalition for Hispanic Children and Families
Coalition for the Homeless
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
Commission on the Public’s Health System
Communities United for Police Reform
Community Connections for Youth
Community Service Society
Crossway Church
Dignity in Schools Campaign – New York
Equal Justice Initiative
Faith in New York
Families On The Move of NYC, Inc.
First Corinthian Baptist Church
Forestdale Inc.
Good Shepherd Services
Graham Windham
Harlem Children’s Zone
Human Services Council
Jewish Child Care Association
Latino Justice PRLDEF
Lawyers for Children
Legal Action Center
Lenox Hill Neighborhood House
Long Island Progressive Coalition
Lutheran Family Health Centers
Make the Road New York
Mental Health Association in New York State, Inc.
Montefiore School Health Program
National Association of Social Workers – New York State
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
Neighborhood Family Services Coalition
New Hour for Women and Children, LI
New York American Academy of Pediatrics, District II
New York Association of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Providers, Inc.
New York Center for Juvenile Justice
New York Civil Liberties Union
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
New York Society for Ethical Culture
New York State Coalition for School-Based Health Centers
New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare
New York Theological Seminary
NYC Jails Action Coalition
Partnership for After School Education (PASE)
Partnership for the Public Good
Partners in Restorative Initiatives
Prison Families Anonymous
Pumphouse Projects
Save the Kids
SCO Family of Services
Staten Island Council on Child Abuse and Neglect
S.T.R.O.N.G. Youth
Teachers Unite
The Black Institute
The Brotherhood/Sister Sol
The Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES)
The Children’s Aid Society
The Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies, Inc.
The Fortune Society
The Legal Aid Society
The New York Foundling
The Osborne Association
The Partnership For Public Good
The Resolution Plan
Tremont United Methodist Church
United Neighborhood Houses
Unique People Services
Urban Health Plan, Inc.
Urban Justice Center
Urban Youth Collaborative
VOCAL-NY
Pastor Mike Walrond
William F. Ryan Community Health Network
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[i] Effects on Violence of Laws and Policies Facilitating the Transfer of Youth from the Juvenile to the Adult Justice System: Report on Recommendations of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, November 30, 2007,http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5609a1.htm
[ii] Fagen, J., “The Comparative Advantage of Juvenile vs. Criminal Court Sanctions on Recidivism Among Adolescent Felony Offenders,”Law and Policy, Vol. 18 # 1 and 2, Jan/Apr. 1996.
[iii] Fagen, J., “The Comparative Advantage of Juvenile vs. Criminal Court Sanctions on Recidivism Among Adolescent Felony Offenders,” Law and Policy, Vol. 18 # 1 and 2, Jan/Apr. 1996.
[iv] The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the Adult Criminal Court. Issue Brief 5. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. http://www.adjj.org/downloads/3582issue_brief_5.pdf
[v] Raising the Age of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: The Future of 17-Year-Olds in Illinois’ Justice System, Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, February 2013 http://ijjc.illinois.gov/sites/ijjc.illinois.gov/files/assets/IJJC%20-%20Raising%20the%20Age%20Report.pdf
[vi] Raising the Age of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction: The Future of 17-Year-Olds in Illinois’ Justice System, Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, February 2013 http://ijjc.illinois.gov/sites/ijjc.illinois.gov/files/assets/IJJC%20-%20Raising%20the%20Age%20Report.pdf
[vii] MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Issue Brief #3: Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence. Retrieved from: http://www.adjj.org/downloads/6093issue_brief_3.pdf
[viii]“What Makes Delinquent Youths ‘Go Right’?” Juvenile Justice: New Models for Reform(John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2005): 16, accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.macfound.org/press/publications/juvenile-justice-new-models-for-reform/