SALISBURY — Two incidents in Salisbury in the past week have raised questions around juvenile justice in the aftermath of “Raise the Age” legislature, passed in 2017 and amended further in the following years.

On Tuesday, two juveniles were detained after leading police on a chase through the city in a stolen car. At approximately 3 a.m., the two juveniles sped down Old Concord Road, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue North and East Franklin Street before eventually stopping, driving through multiple red lights on the way, according to Major Justin Crews, a spokesperson for the Salisbury Police Department.

Crews said that officers sought juvenile detention for the two but it was denied because they each did not have enough “points.”

Between the two juveniles, Salisbury police officers have reportedly had a total of 27 criminal interactions.

The points mentioned by Crews are a system of determining the delinquency history of a juvenile who has had multiple run-ins with law enforcement. A low level is up to one point, medium is two or three and high is at least four points. Points are only assigned for past offenses upon adjudication. Juveniles are found delinquent by adjudication in the juvenile court system, not guilty by conviction as is common in trials of adults.

One of the juveniles was kept in the police station for 12 hours while officers waited on a family member to become available so that the child could be released to them.

Earlier on Tuesday, another juvenile was detained by officers after being found in a stolen Honda CRV, according to Crews. 

After an officer noticed the vehicle, he reportedly attempted to stop it in the 1300 block of Tabernacle Street. The vehicle stopped immediately in a nearby parking lot, at which point the driver reportedly jumped out and fled the scene. The driver, identified as a juvenile, was later located and arrested several blocks away by other officers.

Again, Crews said that juvenile detention was sought by the department but denied due to lack of points by Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the state department tasked with all aspects of the juvenile system from detention to counseling.

Officers have had 10 criminal interactions with the juvenile.

“They passed the ‘Raise the Age,’ and that’s what’s done this tailspin. The juveniles can do what they want and they’re not being held accountable,” said Crews.

The “Raise the Age” law was originally passed as part of the 2017 state budget and added children aged 16 and 17 to juvenile jurisdiction. The change went into effect on Dec. 1, 2019, making North Carolina the last of all 50 states to increase the age. Another law implemented in December of 2021 raised the minimum age for juvenile jurisdiction from six to 10 years old. North Carolina was also the last state to raise the age above six.

For class A through G felonies, which includes most violent crimes, juveniles are initially processed in the juvenile system as delinquency cases. Those cases are then automatically moved to superior court as criminal cases once a judge finds probable cause or a grand jury returns an indictment. If the same steps are followed in a Class H or I felony case, the judge, prosecutor and defense attorney all have discretion on whether the case is a delinquency or criminal one. All motor vehicle offenses are processed in adult criminal court.

One of the issues may be the large population explosion in youth detention centers due to the increase in ages served. Between 2019 and 2022, the last year JJDP provides public statistics for, the average daily population in youth detention centers, where juveniles are held in secure custody pending adjudication, has exploded from 137 to 305, according to JJDP’s annual report from 2022. The average stay for a juvenile in detention also increased from 22 to 33 in that same period.

However, the average daily population in youth development centers, where delinquent youths receive mentoring, education and therapeutic treatment to prepare them to re-enter their communities, has decreased, albeit by lesser amounts, during that same period. From 2019 to 2022, the average decreased from 194 to 155, according to the JJDP report.

“The increase in admissions, increase in transfer to superior court youth, the loss of detention beds upon the closure of the Mecklenburg Juvenile Detention Center in November (2022), and rising staff recruitment and retention issues brought ever-increasing capacity issues to state juvenile detention centers. Renovation to former centers (Perquimans, Richmond and Dillon) are underway, as is construction of the Rockingham Youth Development Center, slated to open in late 2023,” said William Lassiter, deputy secretary of the JJDP, in a letter included in the 2022 report.

As of Friday, Perquimans Juvenile Detention Center and Rockingham Youth Development Center, which was built by adult prisoners as a Construction Apprenticeship Program project, had yet to reopen.