Is it now inevitable that all states will raise the age?

This year, legislators in both New York and North Carolina took great steps towards improving public safety and providing meaningful rehabilitative services to young people across their states. Elected leaders in both of these states raised the age at which youth will be handled in family court, joining the growing national consensus that youth under 18 years of age should not be in the adult criminal justice system.

Choose community programs over youth prisons to punish juveniles

Sometimes Congress gets it right. This summer, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on juvenile justice reform. The hearing was a call to end the draconian practices of institutionalizing America’s juvenile offenders. The committee's chairman, U.S Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) stated in his opening remarks, “We can all agree that Juvenile offenders must be treated differently than adult offenders.”