In 2017, the North Carolina General Assembly passed Senate
Law 2017-57, otherwise known as the Juvenile
Justice Reinvestment Act, which raised the Juvenile Court jurisdiction in
North Carolina to include offenses incurred by 16 and 17 year olds. This
expansion of juvenile court jurisdiction, premised in part upon the notion that
juveniles commit offenses largely due to psychological immaturity (their brains
aren’t fully developed), is said by some to have the potential to double the
population being served in the Juvenile Justice System. If the advocates that
led to the passage of this legislation are correct, the public will benefit in
a number of ways. These include a reduction in overall incarceration costs
(since juvenile offenders will no longer be able to serve sentences in excess
of their 20th birthday); greater ability to provide necessary psychological and
psychiatric services to this population; and a reduced recidivism rate (since
with all the psychiatric and psychological treatment these juveniles will be
getting and with their increased psychological maturity, they will be less
likely to want to commit offenses in the future). In a nutshell, the Juvenile
Justice Reinvestment Act is claimed to save money and reduce crime as a result
of “raising the age” of juvenile accountability in North Carolina.
While there seemed to be little more than cheerleading in
the days that led to the enactment of this legislation, now that "Raise the Age" is about to begin, it would be an appropriate time to examine two of the
essential claims that supported the bill’s passage.
When one examines the first claim made in support of raising
the age, that the people of the State of North Carolina will save money, the States own reporting
seems to demonstrate that the claim is unsupportable and largely false.
Estimates provided by the Juvenile
Jurisdiction Advisory Committee Interim Report this year show needed expenditures
of $5.7
million in Fiscal Year 2020 alone with a slightly lesser sum recurring
in the years thereafter. Juvenile
Jurisdiction Advisory Committee Juvenile Age Interim Report, January 15,
2019. The Committee Report also recommends that the General Assembly fund the
state court system’s “existing deficiencies at a cost of $15 million in Fiscal Year 2020”
and at a rate of $14.5 million in every year thereafter. Interestingly, the
Committee Report mentions no offset monies
coming from the North Carolina Division of Prisons (or any other participant in
the adult court system). So one can only assume that these funds will be
additional expenditures with savings arising if, and when, crime goes down.
The second claim, that crime will go down as juvenile
recidivism rates decline, is also likely to be false. In a law review article
published in the Journal for Legal
Studies in 2015, Professor Charles E. Loeffler of the University of
Pennsylvania and Lecturer in Law Ben Grunwald of the University of Chicago Law
School report the results of their own study of the effect of “raise the age” as
it was implemented in Illinois and specifically with regard to its impact on juvenile
offenders in Chicago. Charles E. Loeffler and Ben Grunwald, Decriminalizing Delinquency: The Effect of
Raising the Age of Majority on Juvenile Recidivism, 44 J. Legal Stud.
361-388 (June 2015). According to their research, which utilized a difference-in-differences
design with multiple
control groups, increasing the maximum age for juvenile court did not affect
the rate of juvenile recidivism in Chicago. Other studies, according to
the authors, have reached similar conclusions in other jurisdictions. Another
interesting conclusion drawn by the authors is that previous studies used to
support the raise the age legislation were potentially flawed. These studies,
which showed a higher rate of recidivism among juveniles transferred to the
adult system, focused on juveniles who had committed serious felonies, which
are relatively rare, instead of the vast majority of juvenile offenses that
involved misdemeanors and lesser felonies. Thus, it may be the case that the
raise the age legislation was fashioned as a remedy for a problem that might
not have even existed.
Despite all the fanfare and media hype that led to the
passage of this State’s “Raise the Age” legislation, it seems likely that the
people of North Carolina will not be rewarded with any significant change in
the nature of juvenile re-offense patterns. Rather, they can expect juveniles
to re-offend in much the same way as they did before the passage of the
legislation. Furthermore, taxpayers can expect a bill of nearly $5.7 to $20
million dollars each year beginning in 2020. What will they get for their money? It seems
not a whole lot of anything.
