Judge Lippman, New York's Chief judge, is kind of awesome. So, I don't know if you aware, but New York state is one of two states (along with North Carolina) that charges juveniles 16 and over as adults for all crimes. Most other states have the legal age of adult at 18 and those under 18 go through family court. There are a couple of benefits to this. For one, in Family court, your record is sealed, which means that a dumb mistake at 17 isn't going to haunt your employment opportunities for the rest of your life. Second, Family Court provides more opportunities for social services and intervention. When a juvenile is arrested and charged as an adult, studies have shown that this leads to more arrests later on. it is more costly in the short run (when we're looking at it from a budget deficit point of view) but in the long run WAY less costly for the state and society. I support this, and I've excited that my agency will be involved in running some pilot projects as we await for this to pass through the state senate. In fact, i better get back to running those numbers for the Bronx right now... looks like we have 585 16 & 17 years olds who could've been affected by this since January of this year.
Read the article in the NYTimes here.
Read the article in the NYTimes here.
