New York's Raise the Age law, passed in 2017, raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18, and Penal Law 30.00 now sets that age as the general rule, with exceptions that include listed serious crimes committed at 13, 14 or 15, which can be prosecuted as juvenile offenses. Sixteen and seventeen year olds charged with felonies are treated as adolescent offenders. In Queens, all of those cases are heard in a designated Youth Part by a specially-trained judge and prosecuted by the DA's Juvenile Prosecutions Unit. Spodek Law Group P.C. stands with families from the precinct through the Youth Part, and our loyalty runs to your child alone.
Adolescent offender or juvenile offender, and why the label matters.
Under CPL 1.20(44), an adolescent offender is a young person charged with a felony committed at 16 on or after October 1, 2018, or at 17 on or after October 1, 2019. A juvenile offender, defined in CPL 1.20(42), is 13 to 15 years old and charged with one of the listed serious crimes. Both groups begin in the Youth Part, yet the statutes give them very different routes forward, and the difference often comes down to exactly which count the People lead with. Getting the classification right, and attacking an overcharged top count that pushes a case into the harsher category, is frequently the most important work of the first days.
The Youth Part at the Kew Gardens courthouse.
CPL 722.10 requires a youth part of the superior court in each county, presided over by Family Court judges or by superior court judges qualified by the chief administrator. In Queens the Supreme Court, Criminal Term, sits at 125-01 Queens Boulevard in the Kew Gardens courthouse and Annex, and the court's own parts list includes a specialty part designated QYP1/QAP/K-5. According to the Queens DA, all AO and JO cases are heard in a designated Youth Part by a specially-trained judge. Parents should expect to be in that building often, near the Union Turnpike stop on the E and F lines, and we prepare the family for each appearance so the process never catches anyone off guard.
Removal to Family Court under CPL 722.23.
For a 16 or 17 year old charged as an adolescent offender, CPL 722.23 says that after arraignment the court shall order removal of the case to Family Court unless the charge is a class A felony other than a drug A felony, a violent felony, a listed juvenile offender felony, or a Vehicle and Traffic Law offense, subject to the statute's other provisions. That default toward Family Court is powerful, and one of the most valuable things we can do is keep a case inside it by challenging any count that would block removal. The Juvenile Prosecutions Unit also works with the NYC Law Department on cases more appropriately handled in Family Court, which gives us a second avenue to press.
