Opinion: Teenagers should be treated as such in criminal cases

North Carolina has recently established itself as particularly embarrassing compared to other states. The number of problems with mass incarceration in the United States continue to grow.

Criminal justice reform is a topic of great concern to this board and one we’ll return to often, but today we object to one statewide criminal justice policy in particular.

North Carolina and New York are the only states in the country that require 16-year-olds to be automatically tried in adult court, according to the Aug. 26 Daily Tar Heel article “N.C. Commission proposes 16-year-olds be tried as juveniles.”

In a preliminary report, a commission convened by the North Carolina Supreme Court recommended that the state treat people as criminally responsible adults only if they’re 18 or older, which makes sense.

The North Carolina General Assembly may consider that proposal in January 2017 — but, of course, no one who will be affected by their decision is old enough to elect representatives to the legislature.

Disenfranchisement is only one reason why 16- and 17-year-olds should not be treated as adults in court.

The National Institutes of Health and other experts have said the brain does not fully mature until a person is in their early 20s. It therefore seems logical that people under 18 should not be held responsible for their actions in quite the same way that adults are.

The proposal that might go before the legislature in January does not include people charged with first-degree murder — they would still be tried as adults — and a preexisting law sends children as young as 13 to adult court for especially serious or violent crimes.

Those exceptions present their own concerns for the safety and well-being of teenagers on trial for such serious offenses. But the supreme court’s commission — the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice — found that only 3.3 percent of the 16- and 17-year-olds convicted of crimes in North Carolina in 2014 were convicted of violent felonies. The vast majority — 80.4 percent — were convicted of misdemeanors.

The juvenile justice system isn’t perfect, either, but even moderate improvements in cooperation, understanding and privacy for young people in the criminal justice system are worthwhile.

The commission’s preliminary report said North Carolina teenagers experience a 7.5 percent decrease in recidivism when they go through the juvenile justice system instead of the adult system.

For this and other reasons, the commission found that raising the age of full criminal responsibility might even make the state safer.

If we’ve already determined that 16-year-olds aren’t mature enough to vote, attend college or buy a beer, then they are surely too young to enter the adult criminal justice system.

Punishing teenagers like this is just not right. Forty-eight other states have already figured that out.

North Carolina needs to catch up.