Supporters of overhauling juvenile justice in Texas cheered the passage of two state bills even as some mourned the failure of a third that would have stopped the prosecution of 17-year-olds as adults.
Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to restructure the state Juvenile Justice Department’s network of youth correctional facilities to keep teens closer to their homes in the sprawling state — a method that has been increasingly deployed in large states. And they voted to stop hauling kids into court for truancy, currently a misdemeanor criminal charge.
But a closely watched measure that would have ended the routine prosecution of 17-year-olds in the state’s adult court system fell short over the weekend. The House of Representatives had voted to add the “raise-the-age” provision to the Senate’s juvenile justice bill, but House and Senate negotiators agreed to strip out the amendment before a final vote Sunday. That leaves Texas as one of only nine states that still regularly prosecute 17-year-old as adults.
[For more of this story, written by Matt Smith, go to http://jjie.org/texas-juvenile...l-rise-again/108832/]
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