I am the mother of two high schoolers, a son and a daughter, whose wellbeing is of paramount importance to me. I am also a public defender who represents teens charged in adult court. Lastly, I have been the victim of a crime committed by a 16-year-old. There is nothing I want more than for our schools and communities to be safe and free of violent crime. That’s why I support ending the practice of automatically charging children in adult court.

In Maryland, 16- and 17-year-old teenagers who are charged with any one of 33 different offenses — including some misdemeanors — automatically start out being charged as adults and are held in adult jails. As a result, they are denied the developmentally appropriate rehabilitative services provided in the juvenile system at the critically important juncture immediately following arrest.

We only started charging so many teens as adults in the late 1980s. For the past 20 years, researchers have been looking at the impact of automatic adult charging and have consistently concluded that sending kids to adult jails leads to higher rates of recidivism. Maryland has had two separate commissions, a decade apart, look at best practices to address youth crime and make recommendations. Both commissions analyzed studies and data, which consistently showed that kids treated in juvenile court have significantly lower recidivism rates than those sentenced in adult court, and concluded that we need to stop automatically charging kids as if they were adults. And yet, Maryland continues this counterproductive practice.

In 2019, the Maryland legislature created the bipartisan Juvenile Justice Reform Council to study our current policies, data and evidence-based solutions that have worked in other states to make recommendations for ways to more effectively reduce youth involvement in the criminal and juvenile legal systems. Maryland passed the Juvenile Justice Reform Act in 2022, a culmination of recommendations created by the council that focus on the rehabilitation of children and responses that are developmentally appropriate and effective, rather than relying on harsh punitive measures that increase recidivism.

In recent years, youth crime has decreased because the Department of Juvenile Services, schools and communities have invested in strategies aimed at taking care of our children’s needs at early stages instead of only relying on the legal system and incarceration. As a parent, I worry about what would happen if one of my children were to make a stupid, terrible decision; or worse, what if they were wrongfully accused? A child mandatorily charged as an adult can currently be “waived down” to juvenile court. But, the process to move the child from adult jail and adult court can take months. During this time, a child is isolated in an adult jail without any services. In Baltimore County, where I live, judges routinely refuse to move teens from the adult detention center to a juvenile detention center while they await their hearings. As a result, those kids are kept in solitary confinement in adult jail for months waiting for their day in court. This practice continues despite the fact that solitary confinement has a devastating impact on mental health, which makes it more likely that the person (young or old) will commit future crimes and less likely that they will succeed in school, work and a healthy law-abiding lifestyle.

I have also been the victim of a crime committed by a teen — my home was burglarized. Before the police caught the person, it was terrifying to think of strangers in my house and wonder whether they would come back. The individual charged had also stolen a gun from someone else, and that case started in adult court. I was angry and scared, but I also wanted to be safe. When I set aside my emotions and thought about things rationally, I knew that requiring a 16-year-old to stay in the adult criminal system was not going to make me, or my community, safer. I was relieved when he was sent to juvenile court, because what I’ve seen in my 25 years practicing law is that kids who are treated and rehabilitated in the juvenile system are far less likely to recidivate than kids kept in the adult system.

If the outcome we want by charging teens as adults is retribution, we have succeeded. But as a community member, I want laws based on facts we know to be true, and solutions proven to work, rather than those based on fears and appearing tough on crime. As a parent, I want laws aimed at preventing crime, not just punishing it, because I want my family to be safe and healthy. I am not alone in that as a lawyer, parent or crime victim. We have had years of policies that appear tough on crime but do not prevent crime from happening. Ending the automatic charging of teens as adults is in all of our best interests and will make our communities safer.

Kimberlee D. Watts is supervising attorney of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s Forensic Mental Health Division.