Maryland's juvenile justice system is already plagued with many of the same problems that exist in other states, including a lack of increased supervision and incarceration for repeat offenders. Now juvenile justice is taking another step backward in the state, with new "reforms" going into effect that could make it much harder to hold young offenders accountable for their crimes.
The Youth Charging Reform Act, signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore back in May, takes effect today, and that means (among other things) that 16- and 17-year-olds charged with first degree assault and other firearm-involved crimes like illegally carrying a gun will no longer automatically be treated as adults. Prosecutors can still seek a judge’s approval to move an eligible case to adult court, but by default these cases will now remain in juvenile court.
What will that mean for public safety? As the Baltimore Sun noted in an editorial shortly after the Youth Charging Reform Act was signed into law, the legislation had plenty of critics, and they weren't all law-and-order Republicans. Many Democrat prosecutors were also opposed to the changes the new law will bring.
Elevating a case from juvenile court to adult court is not a simple procedural step. It requires a waiver hearing, and the burden on prosecutors to clear that bar is steep. Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, a Democrat, raised this concern explicitly. Bates warned that moving cases from juvenile to adult court is, in practice, nearly impossible to accomplish at scale, meaning that for many young offenders who would previously have faced adult charges automatically, the adult system is now effectively off the table.
Whatever the legislature’s intentions, the practical effect of this bill risks turning Maryland’s juvenile justice system into something closer to a revolving door, particularly for young offenders who carry guns. A juvenile who is picked up on a handgun charge, processed through the juvenile system and released now faces dramatically reduced consequences if they reoffend. And under this bill, there is no automatic mechanism to escalate repeat offenders into adult court simply because they keep coming back. Bates himself noted that under the new framework, a juvenile on their 15th gun violation would be treated the same as a first-time offender for purposes of court jurisdiction.
The primary purpose of the juvenile justice system is rehabilitation, not incarceration. How well Maryland's system works is very much up for debate, but as Bates pointed out, there's no real mechanism to deal with repeat offenders who are resistant or unwilling to changing their ways.
While Democrat prosecutors like Bates spoke out against the bill, I can't find any evidence that gun control advocates did the same, not even those who work for the Bloomberg-funded Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University. The same anti-gun academics who are deeply opposed to young adults being able to lawfully purchase and possess firearms apparently don't have much of an issue with juveniles who repeatedly acquire and carry firearms illegally, which seems like a weird stance to me.
There's nothing wrong with giving a teenager who makes a terrible decision a chance to turn their life around without saddling them with an adult felony conviction. But there's a world of difference between giving someone a second chance and giving them a 15th.
Maryland lawmakers have made it harder to impose adult consequences even when juveniles repeatedly ignore the opportunities for rehabilitation they've already been given. And it's truly bizarre that some of the loudest voices demanding more restrictions on lawful gun ownership among young adults have had so little to say about that. If gun violence is really their concern, then why is a teenager who's repeatedly caught illegally carrying a gun less deserving of attention as a 20-year-old who wants to legally buy one?
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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