State Advisory Committee Releases Report and Recommendations for Juvenile Act
On July 31, 2015, Pennsylvania’s Joint State Government Commission, a non-partisan research organization, released the Juvenile Act Advisory Committee’s report and recommendations for aligning the state’s Juvenile Act with Pennsylvania’s juvenile court rules and procedures. The Committee was also charged with reviewing Pennsylvania’s sentencing response to the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which banned mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles.
In addition to Miller serving as an impetus for the Committee’s convening, the many legislative and administrative changes adopted in the wake of the Luzerne County “Kids for Cash” scandal guided the work of the Committee in its work to create uniform rules for Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system. The Advisory Committee was formally established by Pennsylvania Senate Resolution 304 (2014).
The report, entitled Juvenile Delinquency and Dependency: Juvenile Act Revisions and Review of Juvenile Life Without Parole, was prepared by an Advisory Committee comprised of professionals and juvenile justice stakeholders, including prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, law enforcement, victim advocates, and academics involved in juvenile justice issues. Marsha Levick, Juvenile Law Center’s Deputy Director and Chief Counsel, was a member of the Committee.
The Committee made scores of recommendations, including creating a mechanism to reduce the mandatory minimum sentence for youth charged with felony murder, amending the state’s Juvenile Act to reflect scientific research on adolescent brain development, amending Pennsylvania’s transfer laws which provide for the prosecution of children as adults in certain circumstances, and tightening up the definition of “exclusion” in the Juvenile Act to prevent long-term isolation – or solitary confinement – of youth.
For more information on the report’s recommendations, click here. You can read the full report here.
Image credit: "Pennsylvania State Capitol" by Kumar Appaiah, licensed via CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.