Topic Archive: Legislation

Delaware Code

FAMILY COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE – DELAWARE CODE TITLE 10 CHAPTER 9 Subchapter I. Organization, Administration and Operation Subchapter II. Jurisdiction and Powers Subchapter III. Procedure CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE – DELAWARE CODE TITLE 11 DELAWARE CODE TITLE 11 UNIFORM CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT – DELAWARE CODE TITLE 16 CHAPTER 47 Subchapter I. Definitions…

Recent Positive Legislation Affecting Juveniles

The Delaware Office of Defense Services and various community partners successfully advocated for numerous pieces of legislation in 2018. The bills, many with bipartisan backing, advanced numerous causes including:  expansion of juvenile expungement; enlargement of the Juvenile Civil Citation program; minimization of the use of minimum mandatory sentencing for juveniles; limitations on the housing of…

Florida Juvenile Rules Amendments

Since 2006 the release of the National Juvenile Defender Center Assessment’s Florida: An Assessment of Access to Counsel and Quality of Representation in Delinquency Proceedings, advocates in Florida have made the following changes to the Florida Rules Juvenile Rules in order to ameliorate impediments to effective juvenile defense. The changes outlined below can be found in…

People v. Salas

NJDC co-authored a brief with the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, challenging Illinois’s automatic transfer statute, which excluded children over 15 charged with certain offenses from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court without any individualized assessment or considerations of that child’s youth. Amici argued that with…

In re William B.

In October 2007, the Nevada Supreme Court requested NJDC’s participation as amicus in a case centered on the constitutionality of Nevada’s presumptive transfer statute. NJDC’s brief, signed on to by 23 other organizations, addressed several critical constitutional and public policy issues, including the well-established developmental differences between youth and adult offenders, the problems posed by…

Legislation

Many areas of juvenile defense policy and practice are dictated by, and can be reformed through, state-based legislation. For an overview of state laws relevant to juvenile defense, please see NJDC’s state profiles page. Beyond individual state data, NJDC has also compiled select multi-state comparative analyses in a variety of areas that you might find useful. For…

In re D.B.

NJDC, together with the Juvenile Law Center, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and joined by other organizations, co-authored an amicus brief in support of the petitioner in August 2010, arguing that Ohio’s statutory rape law, 2907.02(A)(1)(b), was unconstitutional as applied to children under the age of 13 who engaged in sexual conduct with…

In re C.P.

In September 2010, NJDC, joined by several organizations, filed an amicus brief  in the Ohio Supreme Court challenging the application of Ohio Senate Bill 10 (passed to comply with the Adam Walsh Act (AWA)) to juveniles where it requires mandatory tier III classification of juveniles aged 14 to 17 as Public Registry-Qualified Juvenile Offender Registrants…

Minimum Age for Delinquency Adjudication—Multi-Jurisdiction Survey

Most states do not set a minimum age of prosecution in juvenile court. And although common sense knowledge of child development and international standards compel removal of younger children from the juvenile legal system, states have yet to heed the call.  Because younger children are inherently more vulnerable, they should not be subject to the potential harms…