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March 12, 2017
NY Times editorial makes pitch for raising the age
This New York Times editorial, headlined "Crime and the Adolescent Brain," makes the case for moving up the age for adult court treatment. Here are excerpts:
Over the last decade, seven states — Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire and South Carolina — have passed laws that channel most young offenders into juvenile courts, where they can receive counseling and support, instead of into adult courts and adult prisons, which are not equipped to deal with adolescents.
This wise approach has bypassed New York, which is one of only two states — the other being North Carolina — that automatically try 16-year-olds as adults. While New York lawmakers fear that raising the age for adult courts would make them seem “soft on crime,” some state legislatures are now considering proposals to raise the age to 21.
Connecticut’s experience is instructive. In 2007, it raised the age of adult prosecution from 16 to 18 as part of a package of criminal justice reforms. It moved most nonviolent infractions — things like shoplifting, drug possession and disorderly conduct — out of the formal court system and invested in counseling and intervention programs that allowed teenagers to avoid criminal records.
A 2016 report by the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School found that raising the age for adult prosecution produced sharp reductions in arrests, court caseloads and incarceration costs. Sixteen-year-olds who are tried as juveniles are less likely to be rearrested than those tried as adults. And arrests for people under 18 dropped by an astonishing 68 percent while the crime rate has continued to decline....
Encouraged by these results, Gov. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut has introduced a bill that would include 18- to 20-year-olds who commit all but the most serious crimes under a new category, “young adult” offenders.... Both Massachusetts and Illinois are also considering bills that would channel most 18-, 19- and 20-year-old offenders into the juvenile system.
Setting the age for adult criminal responsibility at 16, as New York does, is inhumane. New York’s record on this is doubly shameful because state lawmakers in 1962 settled on 16 temporarily when they could not agree on a definition of adulthood. The Legislature promised to revisit the issue, but inertia set in. Generations of young offenders were damaged, some irreparably, by this decision. Surely, it’s time to correct this mistake.
March 12, 2017 at 09:22 PM | Permalink
Comments
The New York Times is a foreign owned political hate speech propaganda outlet, spouting the foreign and alien, open border views of their owner, Carlos Slim, a Mexican cement billionaire. It has the same amount of bias, and of credibility as the web site of KKK boss, David Duke. And, I am referring even to its news articles, and not just to its editorials.
Once managed by Jews, it has become an anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, biased newspaper, with the same anti-Semitism hate as David Duke. David Duke differs in one way. He is honest about his hatred of Jews and Blacks. He is not supercilious, nor is he virtue signaling, the way the NY Times does.
Dismissed.
Posted by: David Behar | Mar 13, 2017 12:31:11 AM
@david
So you don't like the message shoot the messenger. sigh.
As for the substance of the editorial having not read the study I won't comment on it. But I would say that I am skeptical of its results as a background matter. Prior studies have shown that main reason that young adults convicts do better away from adult prisons has nothing to do with their "tender years" and everything to do with the conditions of confinement. In other words, people do better in prison when prison treats them better and it has nothing to do with age.
Posted by: Daniel | Mar 13, 2017 12:24:26 PM
@david
So you don't like the message shoot the messenger. sigh.
As for the substance of the editorial having not read the study I won't comment on it. But I would say that I am skeptical of its results as a background matter. Prior studies have shown that main reason that young adults convicts do better away from adult prisons has nothing to do with their "tender years" and everything to do with the conditions of confinement. In other words, people do better in prison when prison treats them better and it has nothing to do with age.
Posted by: Daniel | Mar 13, 2017 12:24:27 PM
@Daniel. This question has been answered for decades. No matter what is done, from "go home" to "permanent solitary confinement in a cage with food thrown into the savage beast's hole," the outcomes are the same. Half young people in every treatment group improve, and grow up. Half go on to a life of crime, addiction, homelessness. The sole reliable marker is having a girlfriend. That is as likely to be a result and as it is likely to be a cause of being not too bad, just immature. I see conduct disorder, and its adult name, antisocial personality, as a permanent handicap of missing abilities. One should specify their number and severity of impairment before drawing conclusions of any kind.
This level of complexity is beyond the Supreme Court's ability to grasp. They do not want to hear about complexity of a technical subject. They just want to coddle criminals to generate lawyer employment.
Posted by: David Behar | Mar 13, 2017 1:12:40 PM
"Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School,"
Extreme left wing biased, pro-criminal, Blame America First, Hate America Most indoctrination camp, in the pay of Malcolm Wiener for their biased views. Wiener is a Harvard Law grad. That Kennedy School is all Obama staff, all the time. They brook no dissent from their failed left wing views, abandoned by the facts 100 years ago.
"...sharp reductions in arrests, court caseloads and incarceration costs." Oh, come on.
Unrepresentative measurements, with no relation to actual number of crimes. Likely government functionaries lying, by putting crime reports in the trash, to avoid getting yelled at (as reported by police officers in New York, one of the "safest cities in the USA." Just make sure no one is behind you, staring, as you wait on a subway platform.
Dismissed. Silly. An insult to the intelligence of the reader, especially of the crime victim, who knows better from striking personal experience.
Posted by: David Behar | Mar 13, 2017 2:50:58 PM
Some lawyers would like to raise the age of adult criminal responsibility to 25. That is when the frontal lobes are completely myelinated (covered by fat that makes neural transmission fast and efficient). So these defendants should be referred to juvenile court and received therapy.
From the AP, Mar. 3, 2017
Police: 3 teen girls kidnapped by Salvadoran gang in Houston
Mar. 3, 2017 9:21 PM EST
Two known MS-13 gang members, formerly of El Salvador, Miguel Alvarez-Flores, left, and Diego...
HOUSTON (AP) — Two MS-13 gang members from El Salvador, both in the United States illegally, held three teenage girls against their will and killed one of them in a satanic ritual, authorities in Houston said Friday.
Miguel Alvarez-Flores, 22, and Diego Hernandez-Rivera, 18, have been arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping and murder — both first-degree felonies punishable by up to life imprisonment. Bonds totaling $300,000 have been set for each, but immigration detainers will keep both behind bars.
Posted by: David Behar | Mar 13, 2017 4:52:40 PM
