Georgia House votes to prosecute 17 year olds as adults: white woman with short brown hair speaking into mic at podium

Georgia House votes to prosecute 17 year olds as juveniles

Lawmakers in the Georgia House voted Monday to raise the age limit to 17 for prosecuting young defendants in juvenile court. House Bill 462 was approved on a vote of 145-22, sending it to the state Senate for further debate.

Georgia: Empty parking lot for attached low brick buildings with green roofs.

For Kids Unsafe at Home, School Closure Increases Risk For Trauma

In January, Sharral Dean, a therapist at the Family Counseling Center of Central Georgia, was seeing about 30 young clients a week. At any given time, five to seven of them were what Dean calls “at risk” — more likely to experience violence at home, at higher risk for depression, anxiety, fighting in school and entering the juvenile justice system.

Atlanta Expert Says ‘Great Gun Divide’ Can Suffocate Safety Lessons

Guns are everywhere you think they’re not. Guns have been found on the floor of a movie theater and in the diaper aisle of a big box retailer. They aren’t just slid under a mattress at home or tossed up to the top shelf of a closet; they’re lying in a pile of leaves, or behind a toilet in an airport.

Gun Violence in South Outpaces Other Regions For Many Reasons

The mother left and two teens were alone in the house. It took the 13-year-old son 10 minutes to find the gun. It was loaded and in a bottom dresser drawer covered by one piece of clothing. It might as well have been on the fireplace mantle.

community-based alternatives: Angry rebellious teenager being analyzed by a counselor as other teens sit nearby, psychotherapy concept

Georgia Reforms Gave Us More Choices, Better Results

As Bill Gates famously said in his book, “The Road Ahead” (1996), “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

New Zealand: A police officer arrests and handcuffs a young male.

New Zealand Shows Power of Limiting Arrests While Lowering Crime

While we have made enormous progress in many states in reducing detention numbers and closing prisons, too many youth are still spending the night behind bars. Surprisingly, New Zealand provides the United States with a helpful model for effective ways to right size our system by limiting arrests.