The students at Enloe High School in Raleigh, N.C., were gearing up for the end of the school year in May 2013 when some of them devised a senior prank. They’d begun promoting an upcoming water balloon fight on social media, and the school administration had gotten wind of it and called in police reinforcement.
Seven youths were arrested that day and charged with disorderly conduct.
One student, 17-year-old Justin Devon Mangum, was charged with assault and battery for throwing a water balloon that hit a security guard. And because this prank took place in North Carolina, where the age of criminal responsibility is set at 16, the two 17-year-olds and five 16-year-olds taken into custody now have misdemeanors on their records that won’t be sealed by the courts, as is typically done for minors that age in other states.
Brandy Bynum, the policy director of NC Child, has been working toward passing Raise the Age legislation since 2006. She points out that kids like those arrested at Enloe High are going to be asked about their criminal history when applying to colleges and by potential employers.
[For more of this story, written by Roxanna Asgarian, go to http://jjie.org/criminal-respo...sing-the-age/107681/]
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