June 24, 2024
Starting next month, more kids who are charged with violent crimes will be automatically prosecuted as adults. In Louisville, police data show most will be Black.
During a legislative committee meeting in February, Sen. Matthew Deneen introduced a bill that he said would address an important issue in Kentucky — violent crime committed by kids. The solution, he said, is to start treating them as adults.
“If you’re a juvenile and you pick up a gun to commit a crime, you’re committing an adult crime, and you need to be tried as an adult,” said Deneen, a Republican from Elizabethtown.
The bill passed the full Kentucky legislature in April and will officially become law next month. When it does, any juvenile at least 15 years of age who commits a class A, B or C felony using a gun, whether the gun works or not, will be automatically sent to adult circuit court. A child convicted as an adult would receive the same penalties as an adult offender, except they’d be housed with other juveniles until their 18th birthday.
Youth advocates say the policy won’t address the root of the problem and will instead perpetuate a harmful cycle of inequity in the justice system.