A federal appeals court ruled that three Honolulu cops are not immune from a lawsuit filed by a 10-year-old girl who was handcuffed and arrested at school for allegedly drawing an offensive picture.
I feel like that map may be a little misleading. Just because a state doesn’t have a statutory age limit on treating a child as an adult doesn’t mean that is common practice. In most states, the default is that any crime committed by a suspect under the age of 18 is handled by the juvenile court system, where penalties are far less severe, unless some special nature of the crime prompts a court to try the accused as an adult (eg murder or violent rape). A few states set the juvenile cutoff a little earlier.
I feel like that map may be a little misleading. Just because a state doesn’t have a statutory age limit on treating a child as an adult doesn’t mean that is common practice. In most states, the default is that any crime committed by a suspect under the age of 18 is handled by the juvenile court system, where penalties are far less severe, unless some special nature of the crime prompts a court to try the accused as an adult (eg murder or violent rape). A few states set the juvenile cutoff a little earlier.
So it’s more like “we reserve the option to prosecute a child as an adult, but we almost never do”. http://www.jjgps.org/jurisdictional-boundaries