New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News, in which he urges more reforms to the state’s juvenile sentencing.
New York is one of only two states that still tries 16- and 17-year olds as adults. Currently, a tenth of all young people in the U.S. justice system are from New York.
The governor wants to advance a bill that would increase the state’s age of criminal responsibility as an adult to 18.
“Any expectation that you’re going to put a 16- or 17-year-old in a state prison and you’re going to rehabilitate them or you’re going to teach them or they’re going to come out better than they went in is totally unrealistic,” Cuomo said earlier this year.
In the op-ed, Cuomo also cites the success of some of reforms already put in place, like ensuring juveniles are not taken too far away from their homes and families.
We accomplished this without compromising public safety one iota — youth arrests, in fact, are down 24%. But we need to go one very big step further this year and change the way we treat 16- and 17-year-olds charged with crimes.
New York shares the dubious distinction with North Carolina of being the only states in the nation that still prosecute 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, placing these teenagers into a criminal justice system that will do them more harm than good and actually make our communities less safe in the long run.
Cuomo goes on to clarify that serious crimes, like rape and murder, would still be tried in criminal court under his proposed law.
Criminal justice advocates on both the left and right have increasingly emphasized the need to change juvenile sentencing.
