This article is excerpted from a story by Faith Miller that appeared on Colorado Newsline on July 18, 2022. You can read the full article here.
A task force made up of youth mental health providers, victims’ services organizations, state lawmakers and members of law enforcement will soon begin meeting twice a month.
Progressive state lawmakers and advocates hope it’s the first step in changing how the state responds to Colorado kids who act out.
Currently, children can enter the juvenile justice system starting at age 10. The Pre-Adolescent Services Task Force, created through 2022 legislation, will study potential effects of raising the minimum age to 13, including the barriers to services for young people, their families and victims that could be created if those services are no longer ordered by a court.
“Our coalition doesn’t believe that 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds — which are elementary school-aged kids and sixth graders — that they should be arrested, prosecuted, adjudicated and detained,” said state Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, lead sponsor on House Bill 22-1131, the impetus for the task force.
“The majority of the behaviors that they’re engaging in that result in charges are … typical behaviors that most kids go through.”
The sponsors of HB-1131 — Gonzales-Gutierrez, Rep. Jennifer Bacon and Sen. Julie Gonzales, all Democrats from Denver — wanted their bill to raise the minimum age for Colorado juvenile court jurisdiction from 10 to 13, without the need for a task force to deliberate. But district attorneys, local governments and others argued that policy was poorly thought out, ignored the victims of serious crimes committed by preteens, and would prevent families from accessing services through the justice system.
“When you remove that jurisdiction, you’re removing the supports (for youth and their families), you’re removing the protection for victims, and there hasn’t been the conversation — the proper conversation — by the stakeholders that need to be involved in this decision and the state,” Arnold Hanuman, deputy executive director for the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, told Newsline in March.
The protests proved fruitful: An amendment passed during House debate scrubbed the policy change from the legislation and replaced it with a task force to study the services available to families through the juvenile justice system and the gaps in services that would be created by raising the minimum age, and ways the state could bridge those gaps for families — helping them to still access medical and mental health care, tutoring, vocational training and other programs available to “committed” youth. The task force must also look at ways that raising the minimum age for juvenile prosecution would affect victims of 10- to 12-year-olds.
Even after the change, groups including the District Attorneys’ Council were vehemently opposed to the idea of forming a new task force to study those issues. District attorneys pushed for the task force to be created within an existing body, the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, that’s worked on past policies including sentencing reform.
“No other body should be tasked with the difficulty of determining who is going to provide quality Sex Offender Management Board-certified treatment for the 1,430 10- to 12-year-olds who committed felony sexual offenses between 2010 and 2020,” Jessica Dotter, sexual assault resource prosecutor at the Colorado District Attorneys Council, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May.
Prosecutors lost the fight to create the task force under the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, despite vocal support for that idea from Republicans, who are in the minority in the House and Senate and almost all of whom ultimately voted against HB-1131. But district attorneys and their allies in the Legislature earned a nod from Gov. Jared Polis, who in a signing statement on HB-1131 said: “I fully respect the CCJJ and believe that this group is doing important work.” Polis, a Democrat, noted that he would “continue to encourage criminal justice reform policies to move through CCJJ.”
In the House of Representatives, the final vote on House Bill 22-1131 was 38-27. All Republicans and Democratic state Reps. Shannon Bird, Julie McCluskie and Dylan Roberts voted “no.”
In the Senate, the vote was 21-14. All Democrats and state Sen. Kevin Priola voted “yes.”
The legislative fight around HB-1131 is one example of how election-year rhetoric around rising crime put a damper on some progressive efforts toward reform. Those tensions are sure to underscore the task force’s work over the next several months and strain future efforts to raise the minimum age of juvenile jurisdiction.
“As a matter of politics, Republicans really made this issue of public safety,” Bacon told Newsline. “They really want it to be a campaign platform this session, and I think a lot of folks including the governor either are leery of that or have taken an opportunity to lean into that. … This bill had nothing to do with our belief and faith in CCJJ, and because I think district attorneys and in particular those who kind of lead that space really love that committee, they then made it about CCJJ.”
In his June 7 signing statement, Polis wrote that he deeply appreciated the sponsors’ “collaborative work on this bill, which was pared down from policy changes to a taskforce after hearing concerns from stakeholders.” The stakeholders the governor referred to likely included the District Attorneys’ Council as well as the Colorado Municipal Judges Association, Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, County Sheriffs of Colorado and Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, all of whom opposed the bill even after the rewrite.
In prior legislative sessions, Gonzales-Gutierrez has championed bills on housing, criminal justice reform and immigrant rights. But 2022 would be the year she’d focus on making “transformational” change for Colorado children, she decided — kids like those she’s served over her 18-year career as a social worker.
Gonzales-Gutierrez’s first job out of college was as a staff member at an all-female juvenile detention facility run by the Division of Youth Services. She said she was struck by how many of the young people there “had actually been sexually abused or physically abused in their life as a child before getting to this point of being committed.”
Later, she worked as a case worker in the Denver Department of Human Services and now directs Denver’s Collaborative Management Program, which connects agencies and services for at-risk children, youth and families involved in the criminal or juvenile justice systems. Throughout her career, Gonzales-Gutierrez frequently heard from families who were told youth could only access services like case management or behavioral health treatment after being “committed” for breaking the law.
“They would say, ‘When my child was 9, 10, 11 years old, they were having these issues.’ And maybe they were behavioral health issues, right, or maybe it was a traumatic experience,” Gonzales-Gutierrez recalled. “They said, ‘My kid was having issues. However, I was told that my kid had to get into trouble in order to access services.’”
Ironically, she noted, such programs aren’t administered by the juvenile courts, but the Department of Human Services — though a court might order DHS to get involved with a child’s case.
She was disappointed by the opposition to HB-1131 from law enforcement, public school administrators and others.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that running certain policies can be tough in an election year, and it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on,” she said. “I really thought that when we’re talking about kids, and we’re talking about literally children, that it would be a no-brainer for everybody.”
Proponents of the bill also argued that when children end up in the system, it’s usually because they’re victims themselves.
“It was really disheartening to see people say (during debate) that the only thing a child could be with these types of crimes is a criminal,” Bacon, a former Denver Public Schools Board of Education member, reflected. “If any of us said a 10-year-old, god forbid, raped another child, all of us would be like, ‘What happened to that 10-year-old?’”
For its part, the District Attorneys’ Council said the sponsors didn’t fully examine the issues involved with raising the minimum age, and that they failed to bring groups on all sides of the issue into the same room to hash out their differences.
“Merely just changing from 10 to 13 is a simple strike in the statute, but the impact across the entire system is significant,” Hanuman said, naming young lawbreakers, victims and broader communities as examples of those affected. “You can’t just make an age change and then expect everybody in the entire system to turn on a dime. It’s a systemic change.”