The most telling number in a new report on how states decide who is a juvenile and who is an adult in the justice system isn’t necessarily 18 or even 17 or 16.
Instead, consider the number four.
That’s the number of states that have implemented “raise the age” reforms based on the upper age boundary of juvenile jurisdiction since 2009, according to the report from theNational Center for Juvenile Justice.
The boundary determines which juveniles who accused of an offense are treated as an adult. In most states, it’s 17, which means young people are juveniles until they turn 18. This is separate from transfer laws that move a juvenile to adult court for felonies or other serious crimes.'
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Barr, go to http://jjie.org/cluster-of-rai...g-term-trend/128343/]
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