Case Explained: Advocates rally to defend Raise the Age — Queens Daily Eagle – Legal Perspective

By Noah Powelson

A coalition of legal advocates called on lawmakers to defend a state law that prevents youth under 18 from being prosecuted on Wednesday.

On the steps of New York City Hall, elected officials, legal advocates, formerly incarcerated persons and youth called on legislators in Albany to protect the state’s Raise the Age law, which raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18 years old. The Raise the Age Coalition, which represents over 220 organizations from across the state, also called for the state to distribute the $1 billion in funds already allocated for the law that are currently sitting unused.

The rally comes a day after Governor Kathy Hochul gave her State of the State address. While she didn’t mention the law, she has reportedly been having discussions behind the scenes with the state’s district attorneys about rolling the reform back in the coming months.

“Raise the Age is working exactly as intended,” a spokesperson for the coalition said in a statement. “The data are clear, year after year: young people are not driving crime, and treating children as children makes our communities safer. Instead of rolling back this landmark law based on misinformation, Albany must fully commit to its success by unlocking the nearly $1 billion already allocated to support youth, families, and communities.”

According to a May 2025 report from the state comptroller’s office, the state has disbursed $658 million of the already-appropriated $1.71 billion for the Raise the Age law. The funds allocated go toward community-based alternatives to incarceration, counseling and mentoring programs.

Queens City Councilmember Nantasha Williams joined the coalition on Wednesday, voicing her support for the law and demanding Albany take steps to fully fund it.

“We know that these approaches strengthen safety, and incarceration does not,” Williams said on Wednesday. “If we are serious about public safety, we have to be serious about investment.

“It would put real resources directly into trusted community organizations across the state, including right here in New York City, and support the people doing this work every day,” she added.

Bronx City Councilmember Althea Stevens, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Children and Youth, also demanded lawmakers leave Raise the Age as is and provide programs with the allocated funds.

“Our young people deserve more than a pathway into the justice system; they deserve a pathway home,” Stevens said. “Raise the Age has proven that investing in young people makes our communities safer, but the failure to fully fund community-based programs puts that progress and too many futures at risk. New York must stop underfunding youth justice and start investing in real public safety.”

Raise the Age was passed by the state legislature in April 2017, and made it so youth under 18 years of age charged with a felony would have their cases diverted from Criminal Court to Family Court. Before, New York was one of two states where youth that were 16 or 17 years of age could be tried as adults and were sent to Criminal Court.

Youth under 18 who commit the most severe of violent crimes, such as murder, can still be tried in Criminal Court, under the law. Prosecutors can also make applications to judges requesting youths be tried in Criminal Court depending on the case’s circumstances.

The Raise the Age Coalition was formed at the end of last year following comments from public officials – including New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and former Mayor Eric Adams when he was in office – to rollback Raise the Age.

The coalition includes The Legal Aid Society, St. John’s University School of Law Defense and Advocacy Clinic, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York, CUNY School of Law Defenders Clinic, Brooklyn Defender Services and others.

Critics of Raise the Age argue it has incentivizing gangs to recruit teenagers. State district attorneys have indicated they would be talking with the governor and state lawmakers to roll back the Raise the Age law in the current legislative session.

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz has said she will be discussing the law with the governor and lawmakers, but has not confirmed if she wants to tweak or completely repeal Raise the Age.

Defenders of Raise the Age say the lack of funding is undermining the law’s effectiveness to connect teens with services, and that currently available crime data does not back claims that youth violence has increased following the law’s implementation.

According to a 2025 report from the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the overall percentage of crimes committed by youths in the city has more or less remained the same since 2018.

Juveniles accounted for 6.5 percent of all felony arrests in 2024, down slightly from 6.8 percent in 2018. For violent felonies, youth crime’s share declined from 11.9 percent in 2018 to 10.9 percent in 2024, before eventually increasing back up to 12.5 percent in 2025.

However, the share of serious violent crimes committed in the city by youth has noticeably increased. Youth arrests in this category made up 9.8 percent of the city’s total in 2018, increasing to 15.6 percent in 2024 and to 23.3 percent in 2025.

Youth recidivism rates have also dropped in recent years. MACJ said youth recidivism rate at first increased from 33.3 percent in 2018 to 37.6 percent in 2020, then declined to 32.3 percent by 2024.

But numbers overall show that crimes committed by adults, especially between ages of 18 and 24, continue to drive most crime in the city.