Adults or juveniles?

Published June 23, 2016

Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, June 22, 2016.

North Carolina is one of two states where 16-year-olds charged with crimes are considered adults. New York is the other.

North Carolina and New York have been left behind as other states have raised the age of adult responsibility to 17 or 18. There are good reasons to follow, but the N.C. Department of Public Safety isn’t waiting for lawmakers to act. It is taking important steps to provide age-appropriate correctional strategies for young offenders.

This isn’t a matter of treating anyone with kid gloves. Rather, it’s making a better effort to divert youngsters from possible lives of crime — while making the state safer in the long run and saving taxpayers’ money.

Last week, the state prison system announced it will end the practice of putting 16- and 17-year-old offenders in solitary confinement as punishment for infractions. The language used by W. David Guice, commissioner of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice, to explain the decision was not what many people would expect:

“The mental health, medical, educational, social, spiritual and emotional needs of these youth are numerous and complex. It is important that while these youth are in our care, their unique needs are accurately identified and addressed in the most effective way possible.”

This may sound strange, given the serious crimes, including murder, committed by some young offenders. They’re usually viewed as being locked away, justifiably so, and not put in the “care” of prison officials. Their “unique needs” don’t arouse the sympathies of the public.

Yet, something significant has happened in those other states that have decided to leave young offenders in the juvenile justice system for a year or two longer: They’ve done a better job of rehabilitation, reducing recidivism. When 16- and 17-year-olds enter the adult system, which stresses punishment, they are more likely to return again and again.

Some 70 offenders younger than 18 are housed at the Foothills Correctional Institution in Morganton. The facility is structured to maintain sight and sound separation from the older inmate population. New programming will put more emphasis on education, behavioral health treatment, life skills development and family and community rehabilitation work, officials say.

Some young offenders have to serve sentences that will keep them in prison well into adulthood. But the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that, for reasons based on developmental science, young offenders should be held to a different standard of culpability. Even a murderer who’s younger than 18 cannot be sentenced to death or even life without the possibility of parole except in extraordinary circumstances.

North Carolina someday may change its law so that most 16- and 17-year-old offenders are handled in the juvenile criminal system with its emphasis on rehabilitation. Until then, it’s wise for prison officials to do what they can to save misguided youngsters from more mistakes.

http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-adults-or-juveniles/article_8917b575-3dbf-5dd9-ae93-21bebafbb760.html