Can New York’s ‘Raise the Age’ Law Be Saved?
New York's state legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul are currently locked in a debate over how to handle the the state's roll out of the Raise the Age statute, which was launched three years ago but has failed to provide many adolescent offenders with the support services that had been promised to get them off a criminal path.
Landwebs
Juvenile Detention. Photo by circulating, via Flickr
New York’s state legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul are currently locked in a debate over how to handle the the state’s roll out of the Raise the Age statute, which was launched three years ago but has failed to provide many adolescent offenders with the support services that had been promised to get them off a criminal path, reports the the Times Union.
While Hochul is considering give judges more discretion on whether to transfer the cases of juvenile and adolescent offenders who are arrested for gun crimes to Family Court, citing high rates of re-arrest among that group, Democratic lawmakers who support the statute are pledging to vote against the state budget if it rolls back any of the 2019 criminal justice changes at all.
Although the statute was touted as critical to ushering in a new era for New York’s treatment of adolescent and juvenile offenders, programming behind the changed statute has lagged, including increasing the capacity of juvenile detention facilities where young offenders in need of detention are supposed to receive intervention.
Meanwhile, even as one study found nearly 50 percent of 16-year-olds were rearrested for new crimes in the first year after the Raise the Age statute went into effect more than three years ago, the New York City Criminal Justice Agency revealed similar high rates of recidivism for 17-year-olds affected by the change.
“It has been less than three years since Raise the Age was implemented, two of which were during a pandemic,” Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie’s office said in a statement. “We need to continue to get feedback from agencies, courts and advocates.”
Additional Reading: Teen Arrests Fall Sharply in NY: Is Raise the Age Responsible? The Crime Report, Aug. 21, 2019
