{"id":495,"date":"2012-02-08T10:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T15:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/?p=495"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:18:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T16:18:30","slug":"massachusetts-considers-raising-the-age-at-which-defendants-are-sentenced-as-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2012\/02\/08\/massachusetts-considers-raising-the-age-at-which-defendants-are-sentenced-as-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"Massachusetts Considers Raising the Age at which Defendants are Sentenced as Adults"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_496\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/files\/2012\/02\/0208_brandon-kennedy-624x466.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-496\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-496\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/files\/2012\/02\/0208_brandon-kennedy-624x466-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-496\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandon Kennedy, who went to jail for 28 months on drug charges when he was 17.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Massachusetts is one of only 13 states where criminal cases involving 17-year-olds are handled in the adult justice system rather than juvenile justice system. Fortunately, though, this may change; the state legislature is considering a bill that would increase the age of criminal responsibility in Massachusetts to 18. This follows on the heels of a recent Citizens for Juvenile Justice Report showing that there is a 47 percent greater likelihood of a teen being arrested again if the adolescent is charged in the adult system versus the juvenile system. The report also said younger inmates are more likely to be sexually victimized.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, 500 17-year-olds are sent to adult jails or prisons in Massachusetts every year.<\/p>\n<p>Click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wbur.org\/2012\/02\/08\/criminal-age\">here<\/a> to read more and hear WBUR&#8217;s radio coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Massachusetts is one of only 13 states where criminal cases involving 17-year-olds are handled in the adult justice system rather than juvenile justice system. Fortunately, though, this may change; the state legislature is considering a bill that would increase the age of criminal responsibility in Massachusetts to 18. This follows on the heels of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legislation","category-local","category-sentencing","category-youth","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}