Last week, Michigan legislature passed a package of 20 bills that would stop 17-year-olds from being treated as adult offenders, a package where every bill won support from at least 90 members of the 110 member chamber. Up until this reform, any 17-year-old involved in criminal acts was automatically tried as an adult, sentenced as an adult and housed with adult prisoners.

Michigan is currently one of nine states where youths are still automatically treated as adults in the criminal justice system, and under this law, 14 to 16-year-olds may also be tried and sentenced as adults in some cases. The overall goal with the enforcement of this package of bills is to bring Michigan in line with the 41 other states that recognize the unique needs of youths in the criminal justice system.

Treating youths as adults under the criminal justice system can be extremely harmful and backers of this bill say that youths would be much better rehabilitated in juvenile detention.  For many of these kids, when you put them in prison with adults, you introduce them to some of the only adults they have known, and so they grow up with that type of influence. With no focus on education, counseling or discipline appropriate for their age, more criminals are being created instead of pushing for a system to keep them out of prison, said Senator Anthony Forlini, who sponsored one of the bills. Enhancing their ability to successfully rehabilitate these young adults will both increase public safety and decrease the rates at which previously imprisoned kids will return to the prison system.

The kids in this system are usually from poor areas and lack caring guardians, so while their crimes do deserve punishment, they don’t deserve to be put in adult facilities that increase their likelihood of experiencing abuse, said Toni Bunton, a woman who served 17 years in prison for being the gateway driver of a marijuana deal that ended in a shooting.

The bills, with an effective date of October 2018, will allow Michigan to study the implications for counties that fear higher costs for this juvenile justice. The bills are also intended to make a number of changes that would require big amendments to the current system of criminal justice for 17-year-olds. The bills, along with stopping youths under 18 from being tried as adults and sentenced with adult prisoners, would change criteria that would determine whether to sentence a young adult as an adult or a juvenile, raise the age at which an offender is still considered to be a juvenile and increase county funding for the criminal system separate from the system for adults. Prosecutors would still, however, be allowed to try 17-year-olds in adult court for high level crimes, such as rape, arson, assault with intent to commit murder and armed robbery.

There are some worries among individuals in law enforcement about these kids and the options the state will have available to deal with 17-year-olds who commit major felonies. Concerns remain about how to treat those 17-year-olds who should not share a cell with a 50-year-old who has committed a major crime, but also shouldn’t share with a 14-year-old status offender — an offense earned from running away from home or violating curfew — said St. Clair County Prosecutor Michael Wendling.

The bills would also require the Department of Corrections to offer inmates under the age of 21 age appropriate out-of-cell programming and outdoor exercise five days per week in order to improve the physical and mental well-being of these juveniles.They would also require the state court administrator to provide an annual report on how many individuals under 18 are tried in adult court and would increase state reimbursements to counties that provide juvenile justice services for these 17-year-olds.