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Raise the Minimum Age for Trying Children in Juvenile Court

The United States is an outlier throughout the world in the practice of trying young children in court. In 2019, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), issued General Comment No. 24 stating that 14 is the most common minimum age of criminal responsibility internationally, and urging nations to set their minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14-years- old. The United Nations Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty in its 2019 report also called  on countries to set the minimum age of prosecution in juvenile court at 14-years-old. 

It is shocking to the conscience that there are still states in this country that have not set a bare minimum age at which you can try a child in juvenile court. As the United Nations Global Study stated, “depriving children of liberty is depriving them of their childhood.”

NJJN calls on the states to ensure that all our children have the protection of a reasonable minimum age of prosecution when in conflict with the law, a human right included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The most common minimum age internationally is 14, which is consistent with scientific evidence on brain development and with the minimum age recommended by the CRC.