ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — After violence erupted on Albany streets on the Fourth of July, Mayor Kathy Sheehan questioned why the city had not received enough funding from the county for support services to keep youthful offenders out of the system under the state’s Raise the Age Law. The law makes it so 16 and 17-year-olds are not tried as adults.
William Connors, Director of Probation said, “We are seeing more violent crimes being committed by the youth.”
The concerns of violence from young offenders led many leaders in Albany to ask where the money from Raise the Age initiatives was.
“I would like to know if there’s any truth to the mayor’s assertion that Albany County has fewer programs to engage young people today than it did when New York State Raise the Age legislation first went into effect,” asked Chairman Jeffrey Kuhn.
Sheriff Apple said, “I don’t think anybody lobbing missiles back and forth at each other does anybody any good.”
“The number of programs have expanded significantly,” said Deputy County Executive, Michael McLaughlin. Programs that are meant to keep young adults away from the criminal justice system. But some say, the problem is not lack of programs but instead it is the new climate that Raise the Age Law has created.
Sheriff Apple said, ““They don’t care. They have no fear. They know nothing is going to happen.”
District Attorney Lee Kindlon echoed the sentiment, “The youth know that our options are rather limited.” He believes changes to the law’s language may help. “You talk about tweaks, I talk about changing wording; significant to serious, acting alone or acting in concert. That’s going to do something.
Other county leaders brought up closer collaborations going forward. “We could really have a constructive conversation with the city school district to cooperate a lot more, maybe integrate and catch the youth to do whatever we can to prevent them from getting in the system.”
New programs are not out of the question. One official at tonight’s meeting explained, “4th Family is a new program that we’ve been contracting with, they have developed a youth advisory board for us. So, it’s really getting that youth voice at the table while we’re looking at programming because if we think of programming in one way the youth may not utilize it. But this way we’re engaging with youth and finding out what they want in their community.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
