Raise the Age Reform
Connecticut
Moved 17-year-olds from adult to juvenile justice system.
Exceptional Impact Potential
AltReform's model rates this initiative in the top tier for predicted reform impact. It scores highly across recidivism reduction, racial equity, cost-effectiveness, and political feasibility. This type of reform, when fully implemented, has historically delivered measurable system-wide improvement within 3–5 years.
Youth Reform Context
The school-to-prison pipeline starts early and lasts a lifetime.
Young people processed through the adult criminal justice system are more likely to reoffend, less likely to graduate, and face decades of collateral consequences. Youth justice reforms — raising the age of adult jurisdiction, ending zero-tolerance school discipline, and expanding diversion — break this pipeline at its source. Brain development research strongly supports treatment over punishment.
Impact, Operations and Cost
This reform has demonstrated strong projected impact in Connecticut, scoring in the top tier of AltReform's evaluation framework. Programs of this type and quality consistently outperform the status quo on recidivism reduction, cost savings, and racial equity outcomes. As of 2012, this initiative is enacted into law and accumulating outcome data.
Youth justice reforms operate across multiple system touchpoints: school discipline policies, juvenile court procedures, detention facility standards, and post-adjudication services. Raising the age of adult jurisdiction removes young people from adult criminal processing. School-based diversion eliminates arrest for low-level school discipline incidents. Juvenile diversion programs route first-time and nonviolent youth offenders to community services rather than court. Minimum age floor legislation prevents the prosecution of very young children as juveniles.
Youth diversion programs cost between $2,500 and $8,000 per participant. Detention costs for youth average $148,000 per youth per year in secure facilities nationally. Long-term savings when accounting for avoided adult criminal justice involvement are estimated at $1.7 million to $2.6 million per youth successfully diverted from the adult system.
Legislative reforms such as raise the age require 12 to 36 months to enact and implement, including system capacity planning. School discipline policy reforms through district or state action take 6 to 12 months. Youth diversion program development typically requires 9 to 15 months before full enrollment.
- →34 percent lower recidivism rates for youth processed through juvenile systems versus adult court
- →28 percentage point increase in high school graduation rates for diverted youth versus prosecuted peers
- →Significant reduction in racial disparities in youth contact with the justice system
- →Long-term economic benefit of $1.7 to $2.6 million per youth successfully redirected
Similar Reforms in Other States
Data Sources
Program data sourced from state legislative records and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Impact metrics from Bureau of Justice Statistics, RAND Corporation criminal justice research, Vera Institute, and The Sentencing Project. AltReform scores generated by our ML model trained on 20+ years of state-level reform outcomes. Statistics are the most recent available (2021–2024).