“Science doesn’t support prosecution of second graders,” one lawyer said. Still, in New York, children as young as 7 can be charged with a crime.
by Sarah Maslin Nir
June 3, 2021
… There appears to be little, if any, organized opposition to raising the age of delinquency. But those who resist say doing so would hamstring the legal system, according to Jeffrey A. Butts, the director of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Research and Evaluation Center. In rare cases involving a particularly dangerous child, he said, incarceration may prevent them from being a risk to others.
“You’ll always have these cases where you just don’t have the right resources,” Dr. Butts said. “Any red line set by law is a compromise that basically acknowledges we don’t have a legal system that is capable of making complex decisions.”
[ read the article at the New York Times ]
