Before Raise the Age laws can fully help Black and Brown youth meet their potential, the legislation must first live up to its own promise.
Seven years have passed since the bill became law preventing New York-based courts from prosecuting 16 and 17 year olds as adults for nonviolent offenses. Raise the Age also means providing them with the appropriate diversion programs. $250 million is set each year to support the law but less than a third has gone to such services so far.
Last week, a bill establishing the Youth Justice Innovation Fund passed the state Senate and would direct $50 million out of the $250 million toward community-based organizations serving youth up to the age of 25.
“The promise of Raise the Age was that we were going to recognize that adolescents are not adults,” said Julia Davis, a director at the Children’s Defense Fund-New York. “And we need to resource communities in ways that support children. The last couple of years tell us so much about what young people need. We’ve seen a mental health crisis for young people. We are still making our way out of the pandemic.
“Even before Raise the Age [and the] pandemic and other crises, the array of community-based services for young people was pretty thin. That’s why advocates really demanded with Raise the Age that community-based services be part of that implementation.”
The bill’s language points to social justice impact for Black youth, who face five times the juvenile placement rates as white youth in New York state. Programming helps close the gap in key neighborhoods of color through violence interruption, employment services and alternatives to detention.
Despite the struggles to allocate money, Raise the Age is a success according to Davis. Youth arrests have tumbled outside of New York City and while John Jay researchers found an increase in the Big Apple, their findings dispelled correlations to Raise the Age laws.
“Prior to Raise the Age, every 16 and 17 year old was charged as an adult for nonviolent offenses which meant that you could have a permanent criminal record,” said Davis. “There’s a lot of evidence that shows that young people saddled with permanent criminal records are effectively pushed out of school, housing and employment. And those are all drivers of criminal activity.
“One of the reasons Raise the Age passed was because we really shouldn’t be putting 16 and 17 year olds into an adult system, because it can be criminogenic. It can actually produce more criminal activity if it’s not appropriate for their age and stage.”
Raise the Age laws also stopped the justice system from incarcerating youth in adult correctional facilities, including Rikers Island where Kalief Browder was famously held as a youth for the multiyear pre-trial detainment that led to his suicide. The legislation also allows New Yorkers to pursue sealing certain convictions including some felonies if they do not reoffend after a decade.
The fund would be administered by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. While the agency does not directly comment on pending legislation, its executive deputy commissioner Joseph Popcun spoke to the AmNews about Project RISE, a statewide effort the Children’s Defense Fund-New York says the Youth Justice Innovation Fund would build upon.
RISE, short for Respond, Invest, Sustain, Empower, funds gun violence prevention programs in 10 municipalities across the state.
“We went into those communities, we set a broad table of local government, community-based organizations [and] also resident leaders, and asked them, what’s missing from this community that would make it feel safer and stronger? And they identified a variety of different programs, everything from after school programs to mental health services to extracurricular engagement, you name it.
“Through our model, instead of the traditional competitive Request for Application, we’re going to be more of a co-pilot, and provide $2 million to each of these 10 communities, for the organizations receive the money, and then they have to pass through at least 25%, but in many instances more, to the mom and pop grassroots organizations that have never received state dollars before and aren’t really on everyone’s radar.”
As for the Youth Justice Innovation Fund, the bill will now go through the assembly. Harlem’s own Cordell Cleare is the state senate’s sponsor while Long Island’s Michaelle C. Solages introduced the bill to the assembly.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.