The United States dominates the world of incarceration, jailing more individuals than any other country.[1] At any given time, there are approximately two million people suffering behind bars and struggling to endure the many harms associated with the legal system.[2] Laws surrounding the criminal justice system greatly impact how people are treated, charged, and prosecuted.[3] More specifically, juveniles are generally afforded additional protections throughout the juvenile court system and its adjudication processes that they would not receive in adult criminal court.[4] For example, juvenile offender records are confidential and permanently sealed, while adult records are available to the public.[5] Regardless, many juveniles remain incarcerated.[6] In 2022, 27,600 youth were held in juvenile justice facilities.[7]
Several studies indicate that incarcerated juveniles experience great physical and psychological harm that may follow them throughout their lives, and, for example, make them more susceptible to substance abuse and re-incarceration.[8] Over time, some states have recognized the immense harm that incarceration inflicts on juveniles.[9] As a result, they have attempted to pursue rehabilitative initiatives by reducing the number of children incarcerated in juvenile prisons and instead diverting funding to alternative community placements and new programs that provide an array of services.[10]
Despite these efforts, some minors do not receive the benefit of rehabilitative approaches from the juvenile justice system and are instead prosecuted as adults and placed in adult prisons.[11] Nationwide data indicates that in 2021, approximately 2,000 children under the age of 18 were held in jails, and about 85 percent of jailed minors were in custody as adults.[12] Juveniles already experience serious physical and psychological harms; and these risks worsen when juveniles are held in adult facilities, leading to elevated risks of suicide, sexual assault, and recidivism rates upon release.[13]
Given these additional harms, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly issued decisions aimed at reducing harsh adult sentences and treatment for youth.[14] For example, the Court banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders,[15] prohibited life without parole sentences for juveniles for non-homicide offenses,[16] and forbid mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles involved in homicide crimes.[17] In each of these decisions, the Court accepted scientific research indicating that youth offenders can be reformed and reasoned that children are generally “less blameworthy for their criminal conduct than adults.”[18]
These three Supreme Court rulings prompted numerous states to ban life without parole for juveniles altogether.[19] Many states went even further to protect youth offenders from dangers of the adult criminal system by no longer prosecuting certain ages and crimes as adults.[20] Accordingly, states actively promoted the “Raise the Age” policy, which increased the age at which juveniles are considered adults in the criminal justice system and brought more children under the jurisdiction of juvenile courts.[21] By keeping juveniles in the juvenile justice system, Raise the Age laws protect children by prioritizing rehabilitative-focused discipline.[22] Juveniles entangled with adult criminal courts tend to encounter prisons that fail to address the developmental needs of youth and offer fewer rehabilitation programs.[23] In recognizing the differences between the juvenile and adult systems and the effects this has on children, Raise the Age laws encourage increased intervention and effective education directed at youth offenders, to help them learn from their mistakes.[24]
Specifically, North Carolina’s Raise the Age law removed sixteen- and seventeen-year-old offenders from the adult system and placed them within juvenile courts.[25] North Carolina’s Raise the Age law was enacted in 2017 and implemented in 2019, accompanied by strong bipartisan support and “years of research, study, and deliberation.”[26] Despite passing so recently, 2024 North Carolina House Bill 834 (HB 834) repealed the Raise the Age law, and redirected juveniles back into the adult criminal system. HB 834 was signed in June 2024,[27] becoming effective for offenses committed on or after December 1, 2024.[28] HB 834 provides that sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds charged with A through E felonies should automatically be treated as adults rather than juveniles.[29] The potential consequences of redefining classes of juveniles with certain felony charges as adults under North Carolina law sparked conversations on competing values of public safety and protecting criminally convicted minors.[30]
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper first vetoed the bill and stated,
“This bill . . . begins to erode our bipartisan ‘Raise the Age’ law we agreed to four years ago . . . Instead, the legislature should invest significantly more in our juvenile justice system to ensure resources are available to help prevent crimes and appropriately deal with our children who break the law.”[31]
North Carolina’s actions contradict the general trend toward protecting juveniles from the harms associated with the adult criminal justice system. By treating more juveniles as adults, HB 834 fails to address the root causes of youth crime.[32] This poses dangerous consequences for both the affected juveniles and the community at large. Juveniles’ increased involvement with the adult criminal justice system and incarceration negatively affects public safety, and harms convicted minors’ physical and mental health, thereby impacting their educational and career success and consequently what they contribute to society at large.[33] It is imperative that North Carolina closely watches HB 834’s aftermath and how it implicates both children and their communities.
[1] United States Profile, Prison Pol’y Initiative, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/US.html (last visited Feb. 23, 2025).
[2] Growth in Mass Incarceration, The Sent’g Project, https://www.sentencingproject.org/research (last visited Feb. 23, 2025).
[3] Youth Tried as Adults, Juv. L. Cent., https://jlc.org/issues/youth-tried-adults (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[4] Taylar-Simone McCants, How Do Juvenile Proceedings Differ From Adult Criminal Proceedings?, FindLaw (Jan. 5, 2024), https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/juvenile-justice/how-do-juvenile-proceedings-differ-from-adult-criminal-proceeding.html.
[5] K.M. Slade, As North Carolina Sidelines Juvenile Justice Reforms, Communities Step In, The Am. Prospect (Sept. 20, 2024), https://prospect.org/justice/2024-09-20-north-carolina-sidelines-juvenile-justice-reforms.
[6] Joshua Rovner, Youth Justice by the Numbers, The Sent’g Project (Aug. 14, 2024), https://www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/youth-justice-by-the-numbers.
[7] Id.
[8] Brian Rinker, “It’s Not Just a Jail Break”: Juvenile Prison Populations Reach All-Time Lows, Juv. Just. Info. Exch. (Jan. 10, 2023), https://jjie.org/2023/01/10/its-not-just-a-jail-break-juvenile-prison-populations-reach-all-time-lows.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Children in Adult Prisons, Equal Just. Initiative, https://eji.org/issues/children-in-prison (last visited Feb. 23, 2025).
[12] Youth Justice, Child.’s Def. Fund, https://www.childrensdefense.org/tools-and-resources/the-state-of-americas-children/soac-youth-justice (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[13] Id.
[14] See generally Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP), Juv. L. Cent., https://jlc.org/issues/juvenile-life-without-parole (last visited Feb. 20, 2025); Roper v. Simmons, 125 S.Ct. 1183 (2005); Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010); Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012).
[15] Roper, 125 S.Ct. at 1195.
[16] Graham, 560 U.S. at 82.
[17] Miller, 567 U.S. at 470.
[18] Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP), Juv. L. Cent., https://jlc.org/issues/juvenile-life-without-parole (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[19] Ashley Nellis & Devyn Brown, Still Cruel and Unusual: Extreme Sentences for Youth and Emerging Adults, The Sent’g Project (Aug. 8, 2024), https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/still-cruel-and-unusual-extreme-sentences-for-youth-and-emerging-adults.
[20] Jeremy Loudenback, After Juvenile Justice Reforms, Two States Return to Prosecuting More Teens as Adults, The Imprint (Aug. 23, 2024), https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/after-juvenile-justice-reforms-two-states-return-to-prosecuting-more-teens-as-adults/251395 #:~:text=Under%20North%20Carolina%20House%20Bill%20834%2C%20an,automatically%20treat%2016%2D%20and%2017%2Dyear%2Dolds%20as%20adults.
[21] Marcy Mistrett, Bringing More Teens Home: Raising the Age Without Expanding Secure Confinement in the Youth Justice System, The Sent’g Project (June 25, 2021), https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/bringing-more-teens-home-raising-the-age-without-expanding-secure-confinement-in-the-youth-justice-system.
[22] Adilia Watson, Raising the Age of Criminal Prosecution: How Does it Serve Youth and The Public, The Imprint, https://imprintnews.org/justice/juvenile-justice-2/raising-the-age-of-criminal-prosecution-how-does-it-serve-youth-and-the-public/63258#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20Raise,focus%20and%20sealed%20records%20policies (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[23] Youth in the Adult Criminal Justice System, Off. Of Juv. Just. and Delinq. Prevention, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/model-programs-guide/literature-reviews/youth-in-the-adult-criminal-justice-system#6-0 (last visited Feb. 23, 2025).
[24] Maggie Horzempa, Remembering the ‘Why’ Behind Raise the Age in North Carolina, Tex. Pub. Pol’y Found. (Apr. 3, 2025), https://www.texaspolicy.com/remembering-the-why-behind-raise-the-age-in-north-carolina/.
[25] Raise the Age, N.C. Dep’t of Pub. Safety, https://www.ncdps.gov/our-organization/juvenile-justice/juvenile-justice-overview/key-initiatives/raise-age (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[26] Id.; Melissa Goemann, Don’t Turn Back the Clock on Raise the Age, NC Newsline (June 26, 2024)n https://ncnewsline.com/2024/06/26/dont-turn-back-the-clock-on-raise-the-age.
[27] H.B. 834, Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess., 2023 (N.C. 2023).
[28] New Law Ahead: House Bill 834 FAQs, Off. of the Juv. Def., https://www.ncjuveniledefender.org/post/new-law-ahead-h834-faqs (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[29] Melissa Goemann, supra note 26.
[30] Id.
[31] Governor Cooper Vetoes One Bill, Off. of Gov. Josh Setein, https://governor.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2024/06/14/governor-cooper-vetoes-one-bill (last visited Feb. 20, 2025).
[32] Governor Cooper: Veto the Raise the Age Rollback, Emancipate NC News (June 12, 2024), https://emancipatenc.org/governor-cooper-veto-the-raise-the-age-rollback.
[33] Richard Mendel, Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence, The Sent’g Project (Mar. 1, 2023), https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/why-youth-incarceration-fails-an-updated-review-of-the-evidence.