New Hampshire raises the age of majority in juvenile/criminal statutes. (CT Feature).

During its most recent legislative session, New Hampshire took a step toward reversing the trend to lower the age at which juveniles are tried as adults. Although the effort to raise the age of majority back to 18 did not succeed, the compromise legislation that passed allows youths in the care and custody of the Division for Juvenile Justice Services to remain so until their 18th birthday, if so deemed by the juvenile court. Why would such a conservative, traditional state be the first in the nation to try to reverse the trend to lower the age of majority? Proponents of the effort answer in the best tradition of the law enforcement television classic, Dragnet: "Just the facts!"

Similar to several other states, New Hampshire lowered its age of majority to 17 for criminal justice purposes in 1995. It should be noted that the age at which youths can be certified as adults for specific serious crimes, such as murder and aggravated felonious sexual assault, was reduced to 14, but the recent effort to raise the general age of majority back to 18 did not seek to change this. The reduction of the age of majority for criminal justice purposes was precipitated by a combination of factors: a belief on the part of some law enforcement professionals and legislators that this will yield better long-term results; a particularly heinous murder committed by a young person; some opportunistic political posturing (to appear tough on crime); and a crime spree along the state's southern border with Massachusetts. The latter entailed 17-year-olds being used as drug couriers and/or car thieves who delivered automobiles to "chop shops" in Massachusetts. The theory was that 17-year-olds were easy to recruit in Massachusetts because they were not concerned about being caught and processed in New Hampshire's juvenile system since even if they were adjudicated delinquent, they would have to be released from DJJS custody in a short period of time.

Effective Public Policy

A review of the literature comparing processing juveniles through the adult and juvenile justice systems leads to a clear conclusion that keeping young people in the juvenile system is the most effective public policy. This is true whether one comes from a retributive or a restorative justice perspective. A retributive justice posture would call for offenders to be dealt with more sternly with greater supervision and restrictions, which is not the outcome for youths who are handled in the adult system. The data suggest that the juvenile system is actually more likely to order confinement and provide closer community monitoring of young offenders than is the case in the adult system. Those who advocate a balanced and restorative approach call for developmentally appropriate services and interventions that are simply unavailable to teen-age offenders within the adult criminal justice system.

A 1995 Juvenile and Family Court Journal article compared the disposition of juveniles certified as adults with those who were not. (1) The comparison concluded that juvenile cases transferred to adult courts are more likely to be pending and unresolved compared with a congruent sample under the juvenile court's jurisdiction. The findings also did not conclude that those who were transferred to adult court jurisdiction received harsher treatment or punishment than would be expected in juvenile court. The article did note, however, that the prospect of transfer to adult jurisdiction served as a deterrent to crime in a very small number of cases.

The research was based on a review of cases in St. Louis, Mo., in 1993. It cited several studies from the 1980s, the findings of which corresponded with their own analysis. They found that all the 1993 juvenile cases (those that would be considered felonies if handled in adult court) had decisions rendered. The situation was not nearly as efficient in adult court, in which 36 percent of the transferred juvenile cases were under advisement and 29.7 percent were pending. The point is made even more strongly in the data, which showed that 20.7 percent of the sample cases in juvenile court were remanded to the state's juvenile institutions and 49.5 percent were placed on probation. Of the cases handled by the adult court, 6.3 percent of the certified youths were incarcerated and 17 percent were placed on probation. The researchers believed that many of the remaining and incompletely processed cases were likely to be dismissed.

As elsewhere in the United States, New Hampshire's adult probation caseloads are significantly higher than those of juvenile probation officers. Hence, those 17-year-olds who now are on the caseload of an adult officer are likely to receive much less attention and supervision than if monitored by a juvenile probation officer. This often is exacerbated by adolescents being more challenging probationers than adults and adult probation officers not being trained to deal with them. This combination leads to avoidance or an "out of sight, out of mind" approach to case management by adult probation officers, which might partially explain the higher recidivism rate by youths served in the adult system.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice released a study in January that addressed the methodological concerns raised about another 1995 study by prosecutors and others who supported treating more adolescents as adults. (2) The latter study found that juveniles transferred to adult courts in Florida were more likely to recidivate than those maintained under the juvenile system's auspices. Even more alarming was the finding that "they also recidivated at a faster rate, with more serious offenses, and with a greater number of offenses." The main concern was that the comparison groups may not have been carefully selected because of a reliance on automated data systems. The issue was addressed in the most recent study by developing the comparison groups via a personal review of individual case files. The results in the new study were similar to those of the previous one. About one-third more youths who were processed in the adult system recidivated (49 percent versus 37 percent). When an additional comparison was made among those who recidivated in either system, 40 percent of those processed as adults re-offended more seriously, while only 24 percent of those served in the juvenile system committed a more serious offense.

Why New Hampshire?

The rather consistent findings in the research and professional literature regarding the impact of transferring more juveniles into the adult system begs the question of why New Hampshire became one of the first states, if not the first, to begin the trend's reversal and why it was not more successful in doing so. The answers lie in a series of cumulative phenomena that combine timing, ideology, frustration and institutional pride.

Legislation seeking to raise the age back to 18 had been undergoing study in the New Hampshire House of Representatives' Committee on Children, Youth and Family Law for several years. The committee decided that the time was right to bring the matter forward, partially because the Legislature and Gov. Jeanne Shaheen had agreed to reform the agency responsible for juvenile justice services. When I was appointed director in April 2001, the committee's leadership sought my opinion of the state's juvenile services agency on the matter. I stated that I testified against lowering the age of majority in 1995 based on my understanding of youth development and policy consistency, and my opinion has not changed. At its broadest level, a policy of differentiating the age at which many adult privileges are available to youths (alcohol possession and consumption, voting, contractual rights, etc.) while decreasing the age at which adult sanctions are imposed is inconsistent and unfair. I requested time to review the more s ubstantive literature so I could testify as to both my opinion and the research.

Opposition

The opposition to simply reverting the age of majority to 18 in New Hampshire was led by the Association of Chiefs of Police and a former legislative leader, and at the very end of the process, the county prosecutors. All these parties actively supported the age reduction and attributed a reduction in the overall crime rate (both adult and juvenile) during the 1990s to the lowering of the age of majority. The fact that the drop in the crime rate was a national phenomenon and occurred in all states regardless of the age of majority was not enough to dispel this attitude.

Data reinforcing the argument that the adult system places less restriction on the youths transferred to it were insufficient to sway the opposing forces. In the years preceding the age reduction, approximately 70 17-year-olds were housed in the state's Youth Development Center (secure treatment) on any given day. Admittedly sketchy data from the adult system show that, despite an increase in the cohort of 17-year-olds in the population, approximately 40 were incarcerated in county and local jails and two were in the state prison after 17-year-olds were transferred into the adult system. Despite this clear, data-based evidence, those opposing returning the age of majority to 18 were not swayed.

At the 21st Annual Triple Header, a meeting sponsored by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in cooperation with the National Juvenile Court Services Association, May 19-22, in Tucson, Ariz., Cherlyn Townsend, director of Juvenile Court Services in Maricopa County, Ariz., suggested a similar trend in that state. That is, despite an increase in the absolute number of youths in the affected cohort, the number of juveniles prosecuted as adults and incarcerated in the adult system due to "adult crimes" actually has decreased since the age was lowered and prosecutorial discretion in transfer decisions was enhanced.

Candid discussions with several police chiefs yielded two very practical operational reasons for the association's opposition to raising the age of majority back to 18. The first reason pertains to the supervisory requirements when police have a juvenile in custody. Unlike adults, juveniles cannot be dropped off at the local or county jail when they are taken into police custody. This problem is accentuated in a state such as New Hampshire with only a single centralized youth detention and "incarceration" facility. Rural communities experience the problem even more acutely because they often have only one police officer on duty during off-hours and handling a juvenile requires calling in additional staff for monitoring or driving duties. The latter increases unexpected overtime costs, a typical problem in small towns.

The second reason for resistance to raising the age back to 18 is frustration with the process of certifying certain juveniles offenders as adults. Many prosecutors and law enforcement officials believe that the process is overly lengthy and cumbersome. They may be right about this, but proponents of safeguarding the rights of accused youths argue that the potential for more significant liberty restrictions calls for a thorough and deliberative process.

Comments by two prominent public officials in New Hampshire demonstrate that consistent research findings are not sufficient to drive public policy. In his testimony favoring returning the age of majority to 18, Phillip McLaughlin, New Hampshire's attorney general, cited what he describes as an inherent cultural reluctance on the part of courts to sentence 17-year-olds to adult correctional facilities except in extreme cases involving heinous crimes. He believes this is also true of some prosecutors who hesitate to press for incarceration in many cases despite a desire to have that leverage. In opposing reverting the age of majority to 18, the chair of the New Hampshire State Senate's Committee on the Judiciary presented a different perspective: Sen. Ned Gordon, who is an attorney, argued that the lack of transparency in the juvenile system limits the confidence level the public has in its ability to manage and reform delinquent youths. Finally, both the previously cited published studies suggest that part of the reason for a reluctance to rely on the juvenile justice system is a belief on the part of prosecutors and the police that the juvenile system lacks the resources to accomplish its mission. This, in turn, translates into juveniles who commit felonies not receiving the necessary services. Insufficiency of resources is not a point of dispute between those who favor or oppose raising the age of majority, but the public policy effectiveness of not doing so remains in dispute.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this article, reference was made to the possibility that the long-term effect of the legislation that passed will significantly exceed the modest changes it made. The legislation created a study committee to address the operational problems noted by the parties who opposed the age change and the greater issue of a youthful offender initiative. Authorizing the latter is tantamount to actual recognition that people from age 17 into their early 20s are not little adults and would therefore benefit from developmentally appropriate interventions. The state's senior policy-makers in this realm and those charged with running the adult and juvenile justice systems are committed to tackling this problem collaboratively. Hence, New Hampshire may well be on the cutting edge of enlightened policy and practice in juvenile corrections.

ENDNOTES

(1.) Kinder, K., C. Veneziano, M. Fichter and H. Azuma. 1995. A comparison of the disposition of juvenile offenders certified as adults with juvenile offenders not certified. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, Vol. 46.

(2.) Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. 2002. Juvenile transfer criminal court study: Final report. Jan. 8. Available at www.djj.fl.us/statsnresearch/contractreports/juveniletransfers.pdf.

Joseph Diament, M.R.P., is director of the New Hampshire Division for Juvenile Justice Services in Manchester, N.H.