OPINION: New York State’s Raise the Age Policy is Putting Lives at Risk

New York’s effort to relieve burdens on the criminal-justice system by “raising the age” of criminal responsibility is a flawed and failing policy. Young offenders committing violent crimes face little to no repercussions and are emboldened by a policy that has fallen woefully short of delivering the “reform” it was supposed to provide. For example, consider Eric Chapman, Jr., an 18-year-old with a long criminal history recently chronicled by the Times Union. Chapman has been arrested for crimes like assault, robbery, and weapon possession, and he was given little more than a slap on the wrist by family court judges for each of those offenses. A combination of ineffective rehabilitation programs and laws designed to make it as difficult as possible to prosecute youth offenders clearly failed Chapman, like many others; now he is accused of murdering a young man and critically wounding another when he was 17 years old. The unfortunate reality is family court is not the proper place to adjudicate serious crimes like armed robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. Attempts by prosecutors to keep these cases from being moved out of family court are repeatedly thwarted by convoluted policies that do not clearly define what belongs there and what should stay in criminal courts. Why? Who do these policies, as they stand, really serve? These measures do not protect the public, and they certainly don’t protect individuals like Eric Chapman, who is on a path of violence that rarely ends well. For these reasons, the Assembly Minority Conference has offered a number of solutions. Our plan to fix “Raise the Age” includes the following proposals: • ​Requiring any violent felony offense — especially gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon — committed by a 16-year-old or 17-year-old adolescent offender to be maintained in the youth part of criminal court unless all parties agree to remove the case to family court; •​ Expanding the “circumstances” preventing a non-violent felony case from being moved to family court, removing the current “extraordinary circumstances” threshold that only applies to “one in 1,000 cases”; •​ Amending Criminal Procedure Law and the Family Court Act to ensure judges, prosecutors and defense counsel can access documents pertaining to arrests and juvenile delinquency proceedings; • ​Requiring the victim of a crime committed by a person under the age of 18 to be notified of the outcome of the case; and •​ Including the possession of a loaded firearm as one of the requirements that permits an adolescent-offender defendant to be tried in the youth part of criminal court and not escape criminal responsibility by being removed to family court or juvenile probation intake. There are plenty of times when it makes sense for an individual to be tried outside traditional criminal courts. In order to reduce instances where young people are incarcerated, which will have major impacts on the rest of their lives, sometimes family court is the proper path to justice. However, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds firing weapons at each other in the street do not qualify for that lenience, and everybody knows it. By the end of high school, there is little doubt armed robbery is wrong.  These laws do not make sense, and they’re not working. We must fix these ill-conceived laws and protect those who cannot protect themselves. If we don’t, we will continue to see the devastating impact of cases like Eric Chapman’s.                    

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William (Will) A. Barclay, 55, Republican, is the New York Assembly minority leader and represents the 120th New York Assembly District, which encompasses all of Oswego County, as well as parts of Jefferson and Cayuga counties.