Don’t turn back the clock on Raise the Age

The author argues that North Carolina should not roll back its "Raise the Age" law which presumes that 16- and 17-year-olds accused of criminal offenses should be treated as juveniles. (Photo: Getty Images)

Kudos to Governor Roy Cooper for vetoing House Bill 834 , a bill that significantly erodes North Carolina’s “Raise the Age” law, which was enacted in 2017 with overwhelming bipartisan support after years of research, study, and deliberation.

That legislation, which went into effect in December 2019, put North Carolina in league with the 46 other states that define a juvenile as a child under the age of 18. Those youth would no longer be automatically charged in the adult criminal legal system. Under certain circumstances, they could be moved into adult court – but the presumption was to treat kids like kids.

As a national organization, the National Youth Justice Network has been tracking developments across the country in how states treat children and respect their human rights; North Carolina has been moving in a positive direction.

Earlier this month, however, a significant portion of the Raise the Age law was threatened by the passage of House Bill 834. Without evidence to show it would increase public safety or produce better outcomes for the young people involved, the bill seeks, once again, to automatically treat many 16- and 17-year-olds in North Carolina as adults, rather than juveniles (specifically, those young people charged with A-E felony offenses).

Some proponents of this bill would have you believe that the legislation is just about “efficiency.” But efficiency to do what? The “what” is to make the process speedier, and with fewer guardrails, for trying all 16- and 17-year-old teens charged with the vast majority of felony offenses as adults – and to strip away any vestiges of protection that are afforded to other young people. HB 834 doesn’t just automatically transfer these youth into the adult system, it actually redefines youth charged with these felony offenses as no longer juveniles. This is a dangerous change in the law.

Because teens younger than 18 years old will have been legally redefined as “adults,” these young people will lose critical protections required for youth placed in adult jails under the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection Act (JJDPA). Research shows that moving teens into adult jails and prisons results in high rates of physical and sexual assault, denies them the ability to continue their education (a well-established protective factor against further offending), and results in much higher rates of recidivism than for those youth that we keep in the juvenile justice system. That’s because adult jails were meant for actual adults, not youth that we pretend are adults.

North Carolina’s Raise the Age legislation, which many argued back in 2017 did not go far enough to truly protect youth involved in the criminal legal system, has worked well to both keep people safe and offer kids the services they need. Deputy Director for NC Juvenile Justice, William Lassiter, who oversees the state’s juvenile justice system, agrees that scrapping Raise the Age is not the answer. As he recently noted, more emphasis on treatment, education, and fully funding the existing law would help both public safety and protect young people.

The law does not need to be rolled back. Let’s not turn back the clock and return to a failed policy that harmed kids thereby making us all less safe.

Editor’s note: the state House has scheduled a vote to override Gov. Cooper’s veto of HB 834 for today — Wednesday, June 26.

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