A Proven Track Record

Forty-seven states across the country process 17-year-olds in the juvenile justice system. States who Raised the Age have seen crime rates plummet and improved outcomes for youth in the system. These outcomes include a growth in high school graduation rates, lower racial disparities, and improved mental health care. States are also seeing these improved outcomes translate to fiscal savings. All told, raising the age has been proven to keep communities safer, decrease government spending, lower racial disparities, and, most importantly, improve the lives of youth caught in the criminal justice system.

Has Bipartisan Support

Democrats and Republicans alike believe that raising the age is the right thing to do. Raise the Age appeals to traditionally conservative values such as fiscal responsibility and public safety, while also lowering incarceration rates and providing rehabilitation for those in the justice system, policies favored by Democrats. Finally, raising the age gets to the heart of what we all believe in; that Wisconsin should properly care for our state’s young people and equip them for a healthy, successful life. In this partisan political environment, Raise the Age is one of the few policies almost everyone can agree on.

Improves Outcomes for Wisconsin’s Young People

There are mountains of evidence that “justice-involved youth are more likely to move beyond delinquency and successfully transition into adulthood if they are served by an effective youth justice system.” Young people in the juvenile justice system are exponentially more likely to graduate high school and obtain steady employment. The juvenile justice system also better addresses mental health or substance abuse challenges which may break a cycle of incarceration or trauma among young people caught in the justice system.

Properly Addresses Mental Health Challenges & Past Trauma

“As of January 2020, 100% of females and 72% of males in Wisconsin youth corrections facilities had a mental health issue, including those who were convicted in adult court.” Bringing our state’s young people back into the juvenile justice system opens an array of mental health programming, trauma counseling, substance abuse recovery, and other community-based programming. This expanded arsenal of rehabilitative and recovery programs will address mental health challenges and trauma in ways the adult system simply cannot.

Fiscally Responsible Policy

A prominent argument against Raise the Age is its supposed added costs, but these arguments are misguided. In the short term, the juvenile system leads to more young people served in community-based programs instead of expensive, confinement settings. As a result, a large number of states have seen initial concerns about escalating costs never materialize. Additionally, the placement of young people in the juvenile system looks even better to long-term state budgets. Because 17-year-olds in the juvenile system are more likely to avoid reincarceration and receive a high school diploma, they are more likely to have steady, higher-paying jobs that add to a state’s tax base. Economists from Missouri State University predict that for every 100 17-year-olds moved back to the juvenile system, Missouri will add almost $17,000,000 to their tax base over those people’s lifetimes.

"Staying in the Juvenile system would have given me a much greater chance of being rehabilitated; I would have been treated like the kid I was. I could have been treated by social workers and psychologists. I could have been placed in programs to help kids like myself, which adult prisons do not provide. I would not be so traumatized & subjected to the abuse that I experienced being placed in the adult prison."

— Rex

Addresses Racial Disparities

Wisconsin has the second highest black-white incarceration disparity in the country. While this disparity needs to be addressed at all levels of the system, reforming how we treat the youngest people in our criminal justice system can have compounding effects in reducing racial disparities across the board. Kids Forward has found that the automatic transfer of young people into the adult system disproportionately affect youth of color. And once they are in the adult system, black and Native American youth “are more likely to face conviction in adult court, especially for drug-related crimes.” Bringing youth back into the juvenile system and funding effective rehabilitation and diversion programs reduces racial disparities within the criminal justice system and ensures that the lives of our youth aren’t destroyed by a mistake made in their adolescence.

Protects Young People

The adult prison system is no place for our state’s youth, and Raise the Age would help reduce the trauma and abuse sustained by young people in the Wisconsin corrections system. The conservative MacIver Institute reports that, despite comprising less than 1% of the adult prison population, juveniles represent over 20% of its sexual abuse victims. This may help explain why juveniles in the adult system are 36 times more likely to commit suicide compared to their adult counterparts. Confining young people alongside adults only leads to further abuse and trauma, and our state should do everything it can to reduce the juvenile population in the adult system and protect the young people in their care.

Responds to Brain Science

Research in adolescent brain science, developmental psychology, and sociology demonstrates that adolescents are not mini-adults; research shows that adolescents are highly influenced by peers, impulsive, and fail to consider future consequences, To some degree, risky and even illegal conduct is normative for adolescents. But research also indicates that this is a period of great malleability and nearly all youth will mature and age out of crime if given the opportunity to do so. Ensuring that adolescents are treated in the more developmentally appropriate and rehabilitative juvenile justice system, rather than the adult legal system, leads to better youth outcomes and increased public safety.

Makes Our Communities Safer

Policy experts have concluded that the juvenile system is more effective than the adult system in promoting longterm community safety. This is because the juvenile system’s rehabilitative programming leads to a 34% lower recidivism rate and stop a cycle of incarceration before it even begins. This means young people in the juvenile system are more likely to avoid future entanglement in the justice system. The CDC found that youth transferred to the adult system were 39% more likely to be re-arrested for a violent offense in the future than those who stayed in the juvenile system. Simply put, moving youth back to the juvenile system keeps Wisconsin communities safer.