Data reported to the FBI each year by thousands of police departments across the country shows the percentage of youths taken into custody who were referred to adult courts dropped from 8% in 2010 to 2% in 2019.
David Harrington poses for a photograph in Philadelphia, on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Harrington spent a tense eight months in a Philadelphia jail when he was a teenager — the result of a robbery charge in 2014 that automatically sent his case to the adult court system under state law. David Harrington spent a tense eight months in a Philadelphia jail when he was a teenager — the result of a robbery charge in 2014 that automatically sent his case to the adult court system under state law.
Harrington’s case from 2015 is indicative of a significant shift away from the “get tough” philosophy of the 1980s and ’90s for youth offenders, which has resulted in far fewer children being prosecuted in U.S. adult courts. That has meant second chances for untold thousands of youths. States around the country have been raising the age of adult criminal responsibility to 18 for most crimes. Only three states — Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin — continue to prosecute every 17-year-old in adult courts, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates for minimal imprisonment of youth and adults.
That corresponds with a general decrease in crime across the country, including a 58% drop in youth arrests between 2010 and 2019, according to Justice Department estimates. In 2019, an estimated 696,620 youths were arrested. The Philadelphia Department of Prisons said in a statement that it acknowledges Harrington’s recollection but “there is no documentation” of the experiences he described. The agency said he was housed in disciplinary segregation — not solitary confinement — because of the fights he was involved in.
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