The ACLU and children’s rights advocates were shocked when the House Finance Committee passed out a budget that retained a proposal from the Governor and DCYF to treat all 17 year olds as adults for criminal purposes. Based on a claim that transferring these juveniles out of Family Court and the Training School and into adult court and the “less expensive” ACI would save the state $3.6 million, the General Assembly ultimately approved this regressive measure despite an intensive lobbying effort launched by the Affiliate, R.I. Kids Count and other organizations. On the last day of the session, with active involvement of Senate Finance Committee chair Stephen Alves, the organizations persuaded the Senate to undo the change by unanimously passing a measure that would have set a cap on the population of the Training School, and required use of diversionary programs and the implementation of a risk assessment instrument to keep out of the Training School juveniles who didn’t belong there in the first place. The Senate agreed that these changes would more than make up for the budget provision’s purported $3.6 million in savings, but the House refused to budge and took no action on the measure.

The ACLU and the other organizations involved in this effort have not given up, and are continuing to urge lawmakers to repeal the law if they come back into session later this summer to consider veto overrides. The Affiliate has since uncovered independent information showing that housing juveniles at the ACI will actually cost more than the Training School. Passage of the law also bucks a trend across the country of reducing the number of juveniles sent to adult court in recognition that it is poor public policy and creates more recidivism. In fact, only last month Connecticut legislators restored juvenile court jurisdiction until the age of 18. Rhode Island is now one of only a dozen states that treats 17 year olds in this fashion.

Session

2007

Position

Oppose