Raise the Age
The new Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act received broad bipartisan support because it makes sense. Putting low-level 16 and 17 year old offenders in the adult system alongside adult criminals exposes them to influences that may push them further into a life of crime. And, despite some perceptions that the adult system is “tougher”, the juvenile court system actually holds teens far more accountable for low-level offenses. The juvenile system provides teen offenders with developmentally appropriate treatment and requires involvement from their family; the adult system does not. Altogether, non-violent teen offenders have better outcomes and lower recidivism rates when processed through the juvenile system, and this is ultimately better for public safety.
North Carolina was the last state in the US to raise the juvenile age. North Carolina teens charged with committing a crime at age 16 or 17 have been saddled with an adult criminal record, while teens in other states do not have to disclose their record. When this important change went into effect on December 1, 2019, our state’s teens were finally able to compete with teens in every other state when applying for employment and higher education.
Our Executive Director, Tarrah Callahan, sits on the Juvenile Jurisdiction Advisory Committee and on multiple subcommittees such as the subcommittee on School Justice Partnerships, Minimum Age and Legislative and Legal Revisions.
Visit LaToya Powell’s explanation of the specific language included in the legislation on the UNC School of Government blog.
Juvenile Live Without Parole (JLWOP)
In 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Alabama that not only are mandatory sentences of life without parole (LWOP) for juveniles unconstitutional, but also clarified that LWOP for juveniles is only appropriate in the rarest of cases where a juvenile is specifically found to be “permanently incorrigible or irreparably corrupt.”
North Carolina law has not been updated since the Montgomery decision.
What the appeals of the cases which have had Miller hearings have demonstrated is that the law does not set out standards for the lower courts to use in making the findings of fact, which has caused confusion both in the lower courts and on appeal.
Who Is Affected?
At one time, 94 juvenile offenders, ages 13 – 17, had been sentenced to life without parole in North Carolina. 32 of those kids were sentenced to LWOP under a felony murder theory even though they were not the actual killers. Most of those sentences have been reversed in recent years. Currently, only 52 kids are serving life without parole sentences, and most of those still have not had their hearings as required under Miller. Only five new LWOP sentences have been imposed on juveniles since 2011.
Kids Are Different
Juveniles are more susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures and are still developing the ability to make well-reasoned decisions. They often have greater difficulty working with counsel and understanding the consequences of interrogations and legal proceedings. For example, juveniles are more likely to falsely confess during police questioning. Thus, kids are disproportionately represented among exonerations. These features of juvenile adolescent brain development impact the accuracy and the fairness of juvenile convictions and sentences.
JLWOP in NC
Juvenile LWOP sentences were imposed primarily in a small set of counties in the 1990s. During the post-Miller period, 40 percent of those sentences were reversed, and hearings are pending in most of the remaining cases.
Cost of JLWOP in NC
Given its rare imposition since 2011 and the large number of resource intensive hearings that must still be conducted, JLWOP is expensive. Miller hearings use significant resources because of the retrospective focus on mitigation evidence, including the entire social and medical history of the defendant, and the accompanying need to retain a range of experts, including mental health professionals. After hearings in the lower courts, the case is appealed, and sometimes result in a new hearing. There are currently 46 juveniles in NC that are awaiting resentencing, and ## cases on appeal.
DPS recently told the legislature that the average cost per inmate is $91 per day, or $33,215 per year. There are at least 25 inmates serving more than 40 years for crimes they committed as juveniles (this does NOT count inmates doing life with parole or LWOP, these are just very long terms of years). Collectively, they cost the State $830,375 per year.
In one of the cases currently on appeal, we have been able to uncover partial documentation on some of the costs of the case. It appears that trial attorney spent about 248 hours preparing for and handling the Miller sentencing hearing, which cost the state $18,630. The judge also authorized $10,200 for the defense attorney to put on an expert in “child welfare and trauma.” It appears this witness was a social worker. There was also another expert – a clinical psychologist. We do not have the documentation for how much the court authorized for that expert, but we can assume maybe $15,000 because that expert had a PhD. At any rate, that hearing – solely on the defense side at trial – would have cost around $45,000.