NC looks again at raising the juvenile justice age

March 05--GREENSBORO Seventeen-year-old Jailene Sharpless was out one night in early December with some friends when they saw other people at a supposedly abandoned building.

Curious, they stopped to check what was happening, but as they arrived, so did police officers. Police rounded up Sharpless and his friends with everybody else near the property.

All were charged with second-degree trespassing -- a low-level misdemeanor but an adult criminal charge just the same.

"I did not do anything wrong," Sharpless told his mother, Yashama Revels. "I don't understand, Mom."

At 17, not many would understand.

North Carolina remains one of only two states that automatically consider people as young as 16 to be adults in all criminal cases.

However, momentum has been building over recent years, in North Carolina and elsewhere, to raise to 18 the charging age for most crimes.

This year, both Greensboro City Council and the General Assembly are discussing changes to the threshold age when juveniles can be charged as adults. Modifications are also being contemplated by New York, the only other state that prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults.

On Tuesday, members of the N.C. Senate introduced a bill to raise that age. Senate Bill 146 has been moved to the Senate's rules and operations committee.

New York state lawmakers are considering two proposals that would raise the criminal age to 18, one that would take effect by 2018 and another by 2020. In New York, defendants can request to be tried as juveniles.

Five states -- Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin -- have set the age of criminal responsibility at 17.

Forty-three states and the District of Columbia set 18 as the age at which defendants are charged as adults.

The most recent states to join that group are Louisiana and South Carolina, which last year raised their juvenile age to 18.

People who support a change say there are plenty of reasons to raise the age for adult prosecution.

In juvenile court systems, youths have more access to programs that can turn them around while their minds and decision-making skills are still developing, proponents contend. They have access to their parents, who can advise them.

Sharpless was fortunate. His mother, a hairdresser, had a client in law school who got her in touch with John Powell, the director of the Restorative Justice Clinic at Campbell Law School in Raleigh. Sharpless' friends agreed to enter a first-offender program, in which they pleaded guilty to second-degree trespassing. Under the program, if they stay out of trouble for a year, the charges are dropped.

But they are teenagers, Powell said. And they are going to make mistakes.

Prosecutors told Powell that if Sharpless didn't plead to the charge, they would increase it to first-degree trespassing, increasing the potential penalty from 20 days in jail and a $200 fine to 60 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Powell said he'd see the prosecutor in court.

The arresting officer couldn't identify who was in the house and the judge summarily dismissed the case as it started.

"The reason I took this case is because this is a young black man -- when you walk in the courtroom over there, that's what you see," Powell said. "This kid was going to get railroaded. It was very obvious to me that he needed help."

And the story is the same for men who fill up the prisons, he said.

Data show that thousands of teenagers have been entered into North Carolina's prison system over the past 20 years, costing the state money and increasing the chance they will offend again, which is called recidivism, experts have said. Studies estimate that the state would save up to $50 million a year by not sending teenagers to adult prisons and from reducing recidivism, authorities say.

Making the change, supported by the executive and judicial branches of the state government, would also come at an expense, said William Lassiter, the deputy commissioner for juvenile justice with the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

"We know there is going to be an upfront cost," Lassiter said. "The only concern from the legislative branch is, 'What is it going to cost?'"

Juvenile officers are more expensive than adult parole-probation officers because they spend much more time on juvenile cases.

When meeting with clients to discuss a case, juvenile officers spend about 30 times the time their adult probation-parole counterparts do because they work with more than just the client.

"A juvenile counselor works with the whole family to find out, 'What are the systemic problems in a household that cause a child to end up in the juvenile system?'" Lassiter said.

Lassiter served on a committee assigned the task of reviewing North Carolina law and determining whether the state should raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include offenders ages 16 and 17. Like numerous previous reports submitted to the General Assembly, the "Juvenile Reinvestment Report," submitted in December, recommends raising the age for juvenile offenders.

It pays to change

Studies in 2009 and 2011 show there would be "significant economic benefits" to raising the age, according to the reinvestment report.

The report cites the previous studies, which say that moving 16- and 17-year-olds to the juvenile system could save the state up to $52 million.

The savings come from reduced recidivism.

Connecticut and Illinois reallocated money from the adult court system to help pay for the change.

Crimes committed by juveniles are also on a nine-year decline, Lassiter said. As that number has shrunk, so has the budget needed to serve them.

In 2008, the state's juvenile justice budget was $173 million. Last year, it was $132 million, he said.

"We've shown the juvenile justice system can save taxpayer dollars," Lassiter said. "We need the appropriate resources to come with the change. If you don't have the resources, you're harming every kid in the system."

Tweaking juvenile laws

More than 1,000 juveniles, ages 13 to 17, entered North Carolina's prison system each year until state legislators passed the Juvenile Justice Reform Act in 1998. That law overhauled the legal system serving offenders younger than 16.

The new law required parents to show up in court with their children or face charges of their own. It also required that the defendants go before a judge within 10 days and receive a hearing in 15. It standardized sentencing guidelines for juveniles convicted of crimes. It raised the age for court jurisdiction over runaways and truants to 18.

The law made sweeping changes to how juveniles were handled in court systems.

The changes came about after the General Assembly received recommendations from a task force in the late 1990s, Lassiter said.

"The only recommendation not acted on was to raise the age," Lassiter said. "There was a 63 percent reduction in detention admissions in facilities."

There's been an obvious reduction in juvenile crime since passage of the Justice Reform Act, he said.

From 1995 to 1999, Guilford County sent an average of 59 juveniles to state prisons each year, while Alamance County sent 29, Mecklenburg County sent 64 and Wake County sent 75.

As modifications to juvenile justice kicked in, the number of juveniles entering adult prisons dropped.

From 2000 to 2011 , an average of nearly 450 children entered the state's prisons annually. Of those, Guilford County sent an average of 29 each year, Mecklenburg 26, Alamance seven and Wake 42.

There was another steep drop in juvenile entries into prisons after 2011. That's when the Justice Reinvestment Act passed, putting people convicted of misdemeanors in local jails rather than prisons. It also eliminated immediate imprisonment for some parole and probation violations.

In SB 146, legislators have prepared a bipartisan bill with widespread support for raising the age, Lassiter said.

Compromise was essential to getting the bill written, based on recommendations from the "Juvenile Reinvestment Report."

Under the bill, district attorneys and law enforcement officials across the state would gain more access to juvenile records, so they could take the records into account when determining what charges to pursue.

That compromise prompted the N.C. Sheriffs' Association to support the proposed age change.

"Everybody needs some compromises to get to those recommendations," Lassiter said. "Since those have been made, we need to keep the bill as clean as possible, based on the recommendations."

The bill also calls for regular juvenile justice training for law enforcement officers. The training would include adolescent development and psychology instructions, relationship building to reduce delinquency, and best practices for handling incidents involving juveniles -- arrests, referrals, diversion and detention.

It also establishes a 27-member Juvenile Jurisdiction Advisory Committee, which would develop a plan for implementing the changes to the juvenile justice system. The committee would extend juvenile matters to include 16- and 17-year-olds and come up with a plan that would include costs associated with expanding the system.

The committee would be required to monitor the changes and provide updates on the costs involved.

The bill calls for the change to go into effect on July 1, 2018.

Greensboro council expresses support

"Why would you expect a 16- or 17-year-old to be functioning as an adult?" Greensboro Councilwoman Sharon Hightower asked. "They make stupid decisions. We still make stupid decisions when we're older than 21."

Last month, the City Council made raising the age part of its legislative agenda -- a sort of wish list of items council members would like to see legislators tackle.

"If you're looking at small felonies and misdemeanors, I think we have more opportunity to impact a life positively," Hightower said.

Council members have said they were concerned about people convicted of minor crimes as 16-year-olds being able to find jobs, get accepted at universities or buy houses, Councilman Jamal Fox said.

"Why should we continue to hurt their futures?" he asked. "We all deserve second chances."

Mayor Nancy Vaughan said that as a mother, she knows that 16- and 17-year-olds are not entirely developed.

"At 16 and 17, they don't understand the gravity of their actions," she said. "There is still a lot of maturing to be done."

Prosecutors on board

In the past, prosecutors have been reluctant to support raising the juvenile age to 18 because of concerns over juveniles committing heinous crimes, according to Guilford County Chief Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann.

SB 146, the proposal to raise the age. would exclude juveniles accused of the most serious crimes: murder, rape, sexual offense, certain assaults and other grievous offenses. That exclusion helped get district attorneys onboard with the proposal.

There are questions about whether public sentiment toward raising the age has changed since the November 2016 election.

"The pendulum was swinging toward being more lenient -- incarceration not being the first step of punishment, or even the second step," Neumann said. "They're trying community resources -- to change people's behavior, so they don't continue to re-offend."

But he wonders if the pendulum will continue to swing.

"It's got momentum, and that's what's carrying all of this," Neumann said. "The thing that's going to slow it down is that we can't do it overnight."

Suddenly putting 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for breaking laws into juvenile court is going to put a burden on the system -- requiring more courtrooms, more judges, more probation officers, more programs.

Even though the cases will come out of the adult courts, they only will be a small fraction of the cases in those courts, Neumann said.

Contact Joe Gamm at (336) 373-7090 and follow

@j

oegammNR on Twitter.

___

(c)2017 the News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.)

Visit the News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.) at www.news-record.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.