“Every young person, regardless of the crime they have committed, must be afforded a viable pathway to liberation.”

To protect young people in the juvenile legal system, New Jersey must end excessive sentences and extreme punishments.

Youth justice recognizes that young people are still developing and should be given opportunities for treatment, rehabilitation, and positive reinforcement. Yet New Jersey’s youth waiver, a practice of trying young people under the age of 18 as adults, disproportionately harms youth of color and prioritizes punishment over reform. Youth waiver devastates and destroys lives, families, and communities, and does nothing to improve public safety.

As a part of the Coalition to Protect NJ Kids, the ACLU of New Jersey works alongside partners to end youth waiver and pass racial and social justice bills that aim to create a fairer criminal legal system. Through our integrated advocacy model – an approach that utilizes litigation, political and legislative advocacy, community organizing, public education, and strategic communications to achieve our transformative vision for the future – we push for meaningful reforms to change people’s lives for the better. For example, one of our civil liberties priorities for Attorney General Jennifer Davenport is a commitment to reforming New Jersey’s approach to youth justice, including support for ending youth waivers into the adult system and ensuring consistency and transparency across the state regarding decisions to waive children charged with crimes.

Through advocacy, legislation, and reallocation of resources, New Jersey can build a juvenile legal system that values fairness, developmental science, and rehabilitation. But to see this imagined future become a reality, action must be taken, and legislative changes must be made.

We spoke with Professor Laura Cohen, a Justice Virginia Long scholar and director of the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic, about the state of youth justice in New Jersey and the life-changing impact of second chances. Cohen is also the director of the New Jersey Innocence Project at Rutgers, and director of the Center on Criminal Justice, Youth Rights, and Race.

Laura Cohen: I went to law school intending to pursue a career at the intersection of law, the arts, and international human rights, and this was the focus of my first two years. But when I was choosing my 3L courses, one of my friends convinced me to take the Child Advocacy Clinic. I had no interest in working with children, but the faculty who taught the clinic were young and already had reputations for being brilliant and inspiring (in fact, all three went on to become legendary leaders in clinical legal education), so I took his advice. The clinic was the first part of law school that really made sense to me, and within the few months I knew I wanted to do two things: represent youth and teach a clinic. I’ve been grateful every day since then that I get to do both.

Cohen: “Youth justice” encompasses a wide range of work: legal representation of children and youth charged in juvenile or adult court, strategic litigation, policy advocacy, and organizing and movement-building. As in any movement, these efforts must be intentionally and thoughtfully integrated. Youth must be at the center of and drive decision-making priorities and goals in their individual cases and broader system change initiatives. Effective advocacy on all these fronts protects young people’s legal rights, health, and safety in carceral spaces and the community; ensures they receive zealous and effective defense representation in delinquency and adult criminal proceedings; and works to dismantle the unjust, unequal, and ineffective youth incarceration system.

Cohen: Youth waiver is the practice of trying young people under the age of 18 as adults. Waiver to adult court is devastating for young people. If convicted, waived youth face the threat of longer sentences (including the possibility of life sentences) under harsher conditions than those who remain in juvenile court. Youth who are detained or incarcerated in adult jails and prisons are exponentially more likely to die by or attempt suicide and suffer both physical and sexual victimization than those in juvenile facilities. They are subjected to longer periods of solitary confinement, with devastating effects on their short-term and long-term mental health. They are denied access to educational, therapeutic, and vocational programs. And following their eventual release from custody, they face a cascade of collateral consequences of their criminal convictions, including barriers to housing, employment, and essential social services; the threat of deportation; denial of voting rights; and lifelong marginalization.

Making matters worse, waiver – like every other harmful aspect of the criminal and juvenile legal systems – is disproportionately imposed on Black and brown youth. In New Jersey specifically, a 2025 report by Human Rights Watch determined that relative to their percentage of the overall population, Black youth are waived at a rate that is 19 times higher and Latinx youth waived at a rate that is 3.8 times higher than white youth.

Cohen: Where to begin? Youth justice policy swings like a pendulum from the draconian to the progressive. Unfortunately, sensationalistic media coverage of serious but anomalous incidents often drives legislative decision-making, and in the last year we’ve seen multiple bills introduced that would have drastically increased the number of waived youth in the state, imposed harsher penalties (including waiver) for youth charged with motor vehicle thefts, and reimposed criminal penalties for possession of alcohol by minors. Fortunately, a coordinated effort among the ACLU and its advocacy partners staved off those changes, at least for now.

It’s also important to remember that every day, in juvenile courts across the state, children are being prosecuted for offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to serious crimes and treated differently depending on where they live and the color of their skin. Some of the most impactful system change work begins there, with youth public defenders raising crucial objections and pursuing novel legal and constitutional arguments. As these cases make their way through the appellate process, they often morph into strategic litigation, frequently with robust amicus curiae support from the ACLU and other interested organizations.

Cohen: On the affirmative front, advocates are working to divest prosecutors of waiver decision-making authority and restore discretion to judges. We’re extraordinarily fortunate in New Jersey to have a large and growing coalition of advocacy organizations, survivors of and other people impacted by the criminal legal system, and – most importantly – young people who have come together around waiver reform.

Over the last two years, the Coalition to Protect NJ Kids has drafted proposed legislation; worked with a polling organization to gauge public opinion regarding waiver; had numerous meetings with potential sponsors and other legislators and staff; hosted several events to raise public awareness of the harms of waiver and build momentum for change; and trained a cadre of youth, some of whom are currently incarcerated, in legislative advocacy. They also organized a Youth Advocacy Day at the statehouse, during which young people from across the state, including several who were waived and are now incarcerated in Youth Justice Commission facilities, spoke directly with legislators about the need for waiver reform.

Other affirmative work includes efforts to enact a minimum age for Juvenile Court jurisdiction of at least 12 (under current law, children as young as five or six can be arrested, charged, and prosecuted in New Jersey, in violation of international human rights standards); extend essential protections for youth in police interrogations, including presence of counsel and a ban on deception; remove youth from the sex offender registry; and, consistent with developmental science, extend the youth-specific constitutional protections accorded to minors to emerging adults. All these goals can and will be achieved through a coordinated strategy incorporating litigation, policy advocacy, and media work.

Cohen: The age-crime curve is real! Most youth, even those who commit the most serious offenses, will simply outgrow law-breaking behavior, and harsh penalties, particularly lengthy incarceration in adult prisons, increases rather than decreases recidivism. I’ve represented hundreds of clients who have served decades in prison for mistakes they made when they were young and never cease to be awed and inspired by their deep humanity, determination, and commitment to personal growth and change. For this reason alone, no child should ever be deemed incorrigible, and every young person, regardless of the crime they have committed, must be afforded a viable pathway to liberation.

Cohen: Any and all of the above! And, more broadly, I’d like to see a system that treats children as children; rejects youth incarceration; radically reduces the arrest, charging, and prosecution of young people; acknowledges its racist roots and abolishes its pervasive disparities; values young people’s strengths; and affords primacy to helping youth achieve their full potential.