Two states are again prosecuting more young people than adults

Unlike punishment for adults who have committed crimes, state and federal laws require that the juvenile justice system provide treatment, rehabilitation and the opportunity to correct youths' missteps. Driven by growing research on the adolescent brain, reforms across the country are aimed at keeping older teens out of adult courts, prisons and detention centers.

Two states are now reversing that trend. Republican politicians in Louisiana and North Carolina cited the rise in violent crimes committed by juveniles and passed laws that roll back recent reforms and allow more of those youths to be tried as adults.

Michelle Weemhoff, advocacy director for the National Youth Justice Network, called the new laws in North Carolina and Louisiana “truly shocking.”

“The fact that this contradicts decades of long-standing research seems irresponsible and unfortunately dangerous,” she said. “It feels like we're going backwards.”

Reversal of a decades-long trend

Critics say the harsher sentences have been fuelled by rhetoric and anecdotal reports of crime rather than hard facts. There is also debate about whether judicial reforms have led to an increase in crime.

According to the most widely used statistical measure, the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System found that arrests of juveniles for violent crimes increased by 17% between 2021 and 2022. Yet both the number and rate of arrests of juveniles for violent crimes remain well below previous highs in the 1990s. The most recent data from last year shows that the number of violent crimes committed by people of all ages has declined since last year and is back to pre-pandemic levels.

“The fact that this contradicts decades of long-standing research seems irresponsible and, unfortunately, dangerous.”

— Michelle Weemhoff, National Youth Justice Network

Over the past decade, nearly all states — except Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin — have moved away from charging older teens accused of crimes as adults. Vermont raised its age limit in 2022, allowing 19-year-olds to remain in the juvenile justice system, where they have access to rehabilitation services.

“Brutal survival mentality” in adult prisons

In adult prisons, age-appropriate services and educational opportunities are limited or nonexistent. And children who are placed in adult facilities often face long-term consequences. Unlike in the juvenile justice system, where criminal records are sealed, adults who have served a prison sentence have difficulty passing background checks when seeking housing and employment.

A 2018 UCLA report shows that children incarcerated in adult prisons face the highest risk of sexual abuse of all inmates and are 36 times more likely to die by suicide in an adult prison than in a juvenile detention center.

Shon Williams, 48, was incarcerated at age 17 and spent 26 years in prison before being released in 2019. Now a reintegration specialist at the Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, he says teenagers' well-being suffers when they are placed with adults.

“Everyone has this brutal survival mentality and everything that comes with it – frustration, fighting and rape,” Williams said. “There is no education in these places.”

“The frustrating thing is that we are playing politics while our children’s lives are at stake.”

— Kristen Rome, Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights

The public also appears to be ill served by sending juveniles to adult prisons. A 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that juveniles in juvenile detention centers have a 34 percent lower recidivism rate than juveniles incarcerated with adults.

Landmark decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have spurred nationwide reforms. The 2005 ruling in Roper v. Simmons drew on the emerging field of neuroscience to underscore why adolescents with developing brains should not be treated like adults because of their impulsiveness and inability to consider consequences. Over the next 11 years, three other major Supreme Court decisions reduced life sentences without parole in many cases, deeming them cruel and unusual punishment.

Parliament overrides North Carolina governor

But in two states, prominent politicians, often relying on anecdotal reports of juvenile delinquency, say things have gotten worse. Changes to existing juvenile justice reforms that once had the support of bipartisan coalitions should be abandoned, Republican leaders said.

Under North Carolina House Bill 834, 16- and 17-year-olds would automatically be treated as adults for increasing numbers of serious crimes.

Lawmakers supporting the bill cited crime data showing an increase in crimes committed by juveniles in recent years. Between 2021 and 2022, the state's Crime Index Report found a relatively modest 2% increase in violent crimes and 10% increase in property crimes committed by juveniles under 18. A shortage of available beds in juvenile detention centers and several high-profile murder cases committed by teenagers also influenced the bill's passage.

“If you commit a crime, you have to serve a sentence for it, and these kids are committing serious crimes,” bill sponsor Neal Jackson told North Carolina Newsline. “And it doesn't matter if you're 17 and a half or 18 and a day old, you have to be punished for your crime.”

The state's two-thirds Republican majority passed the bill and sent it to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Cooper vetoed the bill in June, publicly stating, “There are cases where punishments for juveniles would be more effective and more proportionate to the seriousness of the crime if they were imposed in juvenile court. That would make communities safer.”

The Republican-led legislature overrode Governor Cooper's veto, and the bill took effect in late June.

Dawn Blagrove, executive director of the advocacy group Emancipate North Carolina, said she viewed the new law as a “betrayal” of the hard-fought 2017 reform to raise the minimum age for juveniles in the state's justice system – which she viewed as a success.

But because state lawmakers failed to adequately fund efforts to expand rehabilitation opportunities, publicity about overcrowded juvenile detention centers and the backlog of court cases led politicians to declare the effort a failure and roll back previous reform efforts. Now, she said, many more youths accused of minor crimes are being shunted to adult courts and prisons.

“This dramatically increases the number of children who grow up to become lifelong criminals or at least never manage to escape the grip of the criminal justice system,” she said.

Reversed reforms in Louisiana

In Louisiana, the rollback of juvenile justice reforms began with a promise by Attorney General Jeff Landry, then the Republican candidate for governor. In the 2023 legislative session, Republican politicians concerned about juvenile crime supported a controversial bill that would have made juvenile court records public. Although the bill failed in June, Landry promised that if elected, he would ensure the law was changed.

In fact, just weeks after being sworn in as governor, he signed a package of criminal justice bills that lengthened prison sentences, expanded executions, reduced parole opportunities—and required 17-year-old defendants to be treated as adults.

Many of the new laws reverse reforms signed by Landry's predecessor, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. Governor Landry blamed Edwards and the laws he signed for a rise in violent crime in 2020 and 2021, and said the failings of the state's juvenile justice system, which include institutional violence and escapes from locked facilities, have become well known.

Speaking to lawmakers in February surrounded by victims of juvenile crime, Landry said juvenile justice reforms in recent years had “pushed too many of our teenagers into lives of crime.” He cited several recent crimes committed by teenagers as reasons why tougher sentencing measures were needed.

“These youths are no longer innocent children, they are hardened criminals,” Landry said.

Kristen Rome, executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children's Rights, described the recently passed crime bills as a “steamroller” that was rushed through in a matter of weeks with little debate and no cost estimates. She said the governor's harsh language represents a return to the rhetoric of the 1990s, an era of tough-on-crime policies that scapegoated black and brown teenagers.

Activists have dubbed Louisiana the “prison capital of the world,” a state that incarcerates a particularly high number of teenagers. A report released last year by the legal group Human Rights for Kids found that Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate for people who committed crimes as minors. Black youth in Louisiana are four times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

These effects will be felt for years to come, say youth advocates in Louisiana and North Carolina.

“The frustration is that we are playing politics when our children's lives are at stake,” Rome said. “Juvenile justice has become a political issue rather than a question of our shared future, a question of creating safe communities.”