In Connecticut, for example, all 16- and 17-year-old offenders are tried and sometimes incarcerated as adults, even though 96 percent of those cases involve nonviolent crime. In Wisconsin, a fairly progressive state, all 17-year-olds end up in the adult system even though 85 percent of their offenses are nonviolent.
In its zeal to establish a strict 18-year-old threshold for prosecution and incarceration within the adult system, the Justice Policy Institute fails to note that mixing 17-year-old offenders with 13-year-old ones is not an ideal policy either. Many states have no effective mechanism for dealing with older, repeat-offending teenagers, aside from repeatedly dismissing adult charges, giving them multiple “chances” before finally locking them up with adults. Call it the timeout, timeout, timeout, baseball bat approach to punishment.