[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 835 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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117th CONGRESS
  2d Session
S. RES. 835

 Expressing support for the designation of October 2022 as ``National 
                     Youth Justice Action Month''.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           November 16, 2022

  Mr. Whitehouse (for himself and Ms. Warren) submitted the following 
    resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
 Expressing support for the designation of October 2022 as ``National 
                     Youth Justice Action Month''.

Whereas the historical role of the juvenile court system is to rehabilitate and 
        treat young people while holding them accountable and maintaining public 
        safety, and the juvenile court system is therefore better equipped to 
        work with youth than the adult criminal justice system, which is 
        punitive in nature;
Whereas youth are developmentally different from adults, and those differences 
        have been--

    (1) documented by research on the adolescent brain; and

    (2) acknowledged by the Supreme Court of the United States, State 
supreme courts, and many State and Federal laws that prohibit youth under 
the age of 18 from taking on major adult responsibilities such as voting, 
jury duty, and military service;

Whereas youth who are placed under the commitment of the juvenile court system 
        often do not receive access to age-appropriate services and education 
        and remain far from their families, which increases the likelihood that 
        those youth will commit offenses in the future;
Whereas, every year in the United States, an estimated 53,000 youths are tried, 
        sentenced, or incarcerated as adults, and most of those youth are 
        prosecuted for nonviolent offenses;
Whereas most laws allowing the prosecution of youth as adults were enacted 
        before the publication of research-based evidence by the Centers for 
        Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Juvenile Justice and 
        Delinquency Prevention of the Department of Justice demonstrating that 
        prosecuting youth in adult court actually decreases public safety as, on 
        average, youth prosecuted in adult court are 34 percent more likely to 
        commit future crimes than youth retained in the juvenile court system;
Whereas youth of color, youth with disabilities, and youth with mental health 
        issues are disproportionately represented at all stages of the criminal 
        justice system;
Whereas confining youth in adult jails or prisons, where youth are significantly 
        more likely to be physically and sexually assaulted and are often placed 
        in solitary confinement, is harmful to public safety and to young people 
        in the legal system;
Whereas youth sentenced as adults receive an adult criminal record that hinders 
        future education and employment opportunities;
Whereas youth who receive extremely long sentences deserve an opportunity to 
        demonstrate their potential to grow and change; and
Whereas, in October, people around the United States participate in Youth 
        Justice Action Month to--

    (1) increase public awareness of the need to protect the constitutional 
rights of youth, establish a minimum age for arresting children;

    (2) remove youth from adult courts and prisons;

    (3) end the practice of sentencing children to life imprisonment 
without parole and consecutive or lengthy sentences that amount to de facto 
life imprisonment without parole; and

    (4) provide people across the United States with an opportunity to 
develop action-oriented events in their communities: Now, therefore, be it

    Resolved, That the Senate--
            (1) acknowledges that the collateral consequences normally 
        applied in the adult criminal justice system should not 
        automatically apply to youth arrested for crimes before the age 
        of 18;
            (2) expresses support for the designation of ``National 
        Youth Justice Action Month'';
            (3) recognizes and supports the goals and ideals of 
        National Youth Justice Action Month; and
            (4) recognizes the importance of and encourages the Office 
        of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to fully 
        implement the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act 
        of 1974 (34 U.S.C. 11101 et seq.), as amended by the Juvenile 
        Justice Reform Act of 2018 (Public Law 115-385; 132 Stat. 
        5123), in a manner in keeping with the spirit and intent of the 
        law.
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