![]() ![]() The reform bills are a long time coming, Egan said. In his veto letter, Hogan said the bill “fails to strike an appropriate balance that protects the youth and public safety of the state.” “I thank you for doing this for the protection of our children and their constitutional rights.” “On behalf of all of those children that have been harmed by the coercion and by the coerced confessions, I’m happy that we’re doing this veto override,” Carter said on the Senate floor Saturday. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill Friday, but the General Assembly overrode it Saturday. The notice must include the child’s location, why the child was taken into custody and how the guardian can make immediate, in-person contact with the child. The law requires police to notify a child’s parents or legal guardians before interrogating them. Under the provisions of Carter’s other juvenile justice reform bill - named the Child Interrogation Protection Act - before law enforcement officials start an interrogation, children will have the right to consult a lawyer, except in compelling circumstances. “Implicit bias leads to people interpreting young Black children as more mature, more culpable, less innocent and less worthy of grace and forgiveness,” Egan said.īy keeping kids under 13 out of the juvenile and criminal systems, Egan believes the new law will help improve racial disparities within Maryland’s criminal justice system. The juvenile system places emphasis on rehabilitation, rather than punishment like the criminal system - and 94 percent of white children’s cases are transferred from criminal to juvenile court compared to 22 percent of Black children, Egan said. ![]() There are also patterns of racial bias among which kids are charged most often within the juvenile justice system, Egan said. Removing kids who are not a risk to themselves and their communities from the system can free up resources within the state’s juvenile services department to aid children who truly need help, Egan added. A 2020 report from Human Rights for Kids ranked Maryland in the bottom six states in the nation for protecting juvenile rights. ![]() I’m just so happy I never have to sit next to that 9-year-old again.”Įgan added the structure of Maryland’s current juvenile system is among the worst in the country for protecting children’s rights. “I don’t know how to describe what that does to a person’s heart … that level of frustration and devastation with the state of our legal system. “I never have to sit next to a 9-year-old, whose feet don’t reach the end of the chair, let alone the floor, because they got in a fight in the third grade ,” Egan said. It was common for her to work with children between the ages of 9 and 11 because they committed low-level offenses in their classrooms. Jenny Egan, a juvenile public defender in Baltimore, served on the council and said the new law’s implementation will “build better supports” for kids across the state.Įgan started her career handling school arrests. ![]() The bill is based on recommendations of the Juvenile Justice Reform Council, which was formed in 2019 to study inequities and deficiencies in Maryland’s juvenile court system. Currently, kids in the state receive probation terms that end only when a judge has deemed it necessary, rather than terms that end after a certain amount of time has passed. The bill would also set a minimum age for kids to receive criminal charges and create a probation term time limit. ![]()
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