Gov. Cuomo Seeks to Raise the Age of Criminal Responsibility

As Gov. Andrew Cuomo rolls out his agenda for the state in his new term, one of his proposals is to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18, he announced Tuesday.

Currently, the state’s age of criminal responsibility is 16, and New York is one of only two states in the country with an age that low, according to Cuomo.

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The new age would be phased in to 17 in 2017 and 18 in 2018. ”Connecting these young people with the evidence-based interventions of the juvenile system will avoid between 1,500 and 2,400 crime victimizations every five years,” according to Cuomo.

In a report summary about the proposal, Cuomo outlined several reasons for the increase:

First, experience in states like Connecticut and Illinois that have raised the age of criminal responsibility recently has demonstrated that recidivism and juvenile crime rates can be lowered through evidence-based interventions that steer non-violent young offenders out of the justice system and into family mental health or other needed services. These experiences have helped to reduce opposition to reform in this area by showing that public safety can actually be enhanced by such changes. In fact, analysis completed in support of this Commission found that implementation of the Commission’s recommendations would eliminate between 1,500 and 2,400 crime victimizations every five years.

Second, extensive research on the significant negative impacts on adolescents of incarceration in adult jails and prisons has brought a sense of urgency for reform. Higher suicide rates, increased recidivism, and many other measures all suggest that both offenders and their communities are harmed by placing adolescents into adult jails and prisons.

Third, New York’s unique history of juvenile justice has created a pressing reason for reform now. Despite a proud early history in this area, New York State now stands as one of only two states in the country that has set the age of criminal responsibility at age 16. That single fact has become a rallying cry for the current reform movement in this State, led the State’s Chief Judge to urge legislative action, and inspired the Governor’s initiative to appoint this Commission.

Fourth, the impacts of processing all 16- and 17-year-olds in the criminal justice system fall disproportionately on young men of color. Young men of color are substantially over represented among youth who are arrested at age 16 and 17 and who end up incarcerated as a result of the offense. Those impacts are felt not only by the young men themselves, but also by communities of color around the State.

Fifth, scientific research into brain development has revealed only very recently that portions of our brains, including that governing impulse control, develop far later than expected – after adolescence and as late as one’s early to mid-20s. This research has demonstrated that adolescents do not have fully developed faculties of judgment or impulse control. It has also shown that adolescents respond more fruitfully to efforts to rehabilitate them and put them on the right track.

Sixth, that research has, in turn, undergirded several opinions from the United States Supreme Court and lower courts restricting the nature and scope of state and local governments’ punishment of adolescent offenders on the ground that such offenders are both less culpable criminally and more susceptible to fruitful rehabilitation because of their still-developing brains. Those decisions have both resulted from and encouraged reform efforts across the country to improve the juvenile justice laws to reduce unnecessary incarceration and improve rehabilitative programming.

Finally, this shifting view of adolescent offenders has coincided with, and arguably been facilitated by, a steady and significant decrease in violent crimes committed by young offenders since the 1990s. That reduction in crime has replaced outsized fears of young “super predators” with a more thoughtful focus on targeted criminal justice interventions to reduce recidivism without simply expanding costly incarceration.

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