Top New York City law enforcement officials on Monday called for changes to a state law that increased the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 for all but the most serious offenses, arguing it’s contributed to a rise in the number of teenagers involved in gun violence.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch criticized the Raise the Age law while announcing a 208-count gang indictment tied to 12 shootings between rival crews in the Bronx since 2021.
Nine of the defendants were teens, according to Clark, who said young people are more likely to carry guns because the law makes it harder to charge them as adults.
“The mentality on the street is that nothing happens to those under 18 who possess or use a gun,” she said. “This is the biggest challenge for us right now, and it’s an unintended consequence of the Raise the Age law.”
The measure, which was passed in 2017 and implemented in 2018, was intended to divert more 16- and 17-year-olds accused of misdemeanors, non-violent felonies and some violent felonies to family court and keep them out of jails and prisons holding adults. If teens in those age groups are accused of the most serious crimes, a judge or district attorney has to prove why their case should stay in regular court. The law also established a youth part for felonies in the state supreme court.
Proponents of Raise the Age said that so far, state lawmakers have not shown an appetite for rolling back the law. They noted that Raise the Age brought New York in line with most other states, where 16- and 17-year-olds are not automatically treated as adults when accused of crimes. They also pointed to research showing reduced recidivism when young people avoid adult incarceration.
Tisch said the number of teen shootersand victims in 2024 was double what it was in 2018. Clark said the law has encouraged adults to give guns to young people because they think they won’t face significant penalties for carrying out shootings. She said the law needed “common-sense adjustments.”
“We’ve seen 16- and 17-year-olds as well as now 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds with multiple gun cases and other violent crimes that are not held responsible when they’re going to family court,” she said. “Each year, the people arrested with guns are younger and younger.”
But a 2023 study from John Jay College of Criminal Justice found the share of young people involved in violent crime has declined since the law was enacted.
Katie Schaffer, a director at the Center for Community Alternatives, a nonprofit advocacy group, said officials should target adults who coerce minors into participating in crime, instead of prosecuting more young people.
“If there is a situation in which adults are trafficking young people in violence, then let’s talk about the adults involved,” she said. “ Who is served by prosecuting as an adult a child who is being manipulated by somebody older?”
Though NYPD data shows gun violence is declining citywide, teens with firearms have continued to engage in shootings in neighborhoods like Claremont and Belmont, Clark said, citing surveillance videos from the investigation.
The dozen shootings occurred from 2021 to 2025 between street gangs called 9Raq and Thirdside, she said, and one person was killed and three bystanders were injured. Some of the defendants allegedly bragged about the shootings on social media and in rap videos afterward, according to the DA’s office.
“Most alarmingly, four of these youths were already charged with attempted murder for shootings when they were 15 or 16 years old,” Tisch said. “These aren’t kids who just made one mistake.”
Most of the defendants had not been arraigned as of Monday, so information for their lawyers was not yet available, according to the DA’s office. Several others had not yet been arrested, and 10 were not publicly named because they were adolescents at the time of the alleged crimes.
State lawmakers have steadily curtailed some of the major criminal justice reforms New York passed in 2019. This year, Gov. Kathy Hochul and prosecutors across the state successfully campaigned for partial rollbacks on public defender-backed reforms to evidence-sharing rules in criminal cases.
A spokesperson for Hochul’s office didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
Kate Rubin, policy director for the advocacy group Youth Represent, said there’s little appetite in Albany for rolling back Raise the Age.
“There is a frustration that the state government hasn’t spent the money that’s allocated for Raise the Age on the kinds of programs that were promised under the law.”
