New York children under the age of 12 will no longer be arrested for most crimes, according to a bill signed by New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul. Instead, children under the age of 12 will be directed to social services, not the court. Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti said the local social services commissioner “reached out to us to set up a system with all the police agencies, but you can’t get around the fact that this is now an additional duty being placed on social services.”
From TownHall:
“[I’ll] give an example of petit larceny, simple trespassing – low-level offenses. You don’t want to traumatize those individuals and handcuff them and put them into the court system and bring them into jail,” [attorney Barry Covert] said. He noted that the only exception to the policy is homicide, but not other violent crimes. “I suspect, just like the bail reform was redone after about two years, we may see that in the future here, because there probably should be more carve-outs,” Covert said. “There seem to be some clear-cut examples that will probably play out in the future, unfortunately, and the police will be handcuffed and the court system will be handcuffed and we might regret that the carve-out is so narrow that it’s only homicide offenses.”
