Raise the age

A 17-year-old reportedly committed suicide in January while in custody at the Fort Bend County Jail.

Jail staff found the teen - charged with aggravated robbery involving a pellet gun and evading arrest - hanging in his cell, as reported by KPRC-TV.

The young man - who could not have gotten a tattoo without securing parental consent due to his age - had been held for almost a month before he died.

It wasn't an oversight that the teen was locked up in a jail that housed adults with guards used to dealing with adults in a facility that provided minimal rehabilitation resources.

A century-old law on the books in Texas provides that all 17-year-olds arrested in Texas, including juveniles who have committed misdemeanors, are automatically sent through the adult system, regardless of their alleged offense, their maturity level or their personal or criminal history, according to a legislative briefing report prepared by University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Texas is among only five states that treats 17-year-olds as adults in court. It's past time for the Legislature to update this antiquated law and to give teens in the criminal justice system a better opportunity to become productive adults.

In 1918 when this law was enacted, brain science was rudimentary. Since then, we've learned that adolescents' frontal lobes are still developing. This means that teens can have poor impulse control, but that they're also more receptive to rehabilitation than adults.

Research clearly shows that teenagers in the criminal justice system are more likely to move past delinquency and successfully transition to adulthood if they are served by a juvenile justice system. The vast majority of 17-year-old offenders are nonviolent. Fourteen percent are jailed for marijuana possession and 20.8 percent for theft of a motor vehicle, according to 2015 statistics. Often, these kids have not completed high school and 70 percent of them have mental illness.

Yet by sending them into the adult criminal system, they face a host of consequences. They're 34 percent more likely to be rearrested for a felony than youth who stay in the juvenile system. They lose job opportunities, can't obtain vocational licenses or educational loans. And tragically, they're 36 times more likely to commit suicide.

This session, the House did the right thing by voting to make 18 the age of adulthood in criminal justice. But state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, told Chronicle Austin bureau chief Mike Ward that the bill has no chance of passing the Senate. Whitmire, who in 2015 also iced the proposal, cited the need for more planning along with an estimated price tag of $50 million.

Cost is a concern, but the Justice Policy Institute released a report in March detailing how other states raised the age without significantly increasing juvenile justice system costs. Texas should be able to achieve similar results.

State Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston and a co-sponsor of the bill, disputed Whitmire's position.

People should answer for their crimes regardless of their age, but 17-year-olds don't belong in prisons with adults. They deserve a shot at being productive citizens, something they're more likely to get in the juvenile system.

As a criminal justice system reform leader, Whitmire knows well that Texas has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform in other areas, notably with special courts that offer rehabilitative services and deferment of certain criminal charges. Why not add this effort to "raise the age" to the list of things Texas does well in criminal justice?