Utah’s rules for housing minors convicted of aggravated murder will shift after lawmakers passed a contentious criminal and juvenile justice reform bill on the second-to-last day of the legislative session.
Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee’s bill, HB48, would allow a judge to send someone convicted of aggravated murder to adult prison if they were 17 years old when convicted and 18 when sentenced.
“It's so narrow, it's capital murder for a 17-year-old who gets sentenced when they're 18,” Lisonbee said. “That's going to be only a handful of cases a year in the state of Utah.”
Right now, juveniles who fit this description are sent to a secure care housing unit under the umbrella of the Juvenile Justice and Youth Services. These detention centers are essentially prisons for minors, and there are 11 in the state of Utah. Under current law, individuals who commit a crime under the age of 18 are able to stay there until they turn 25 years old before being transferred to adult facilities. If they prove to be a threat to staff or other delinquents during that time, Youth Services has the discretion to transfer them earlier.
The ethics of sending a young person to adult prison received a lot of debate from lawmakers, defense lawyers, prosecutors, law enforcement and even former Utah Department of Corrections inmates.
The Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee heard testimony earlier from Jesus Martinez, a former state prison inmate. Martinez spent 14 years in prison for attempted murder. He told lawmakers about the brutality inflicted upon the young men he saw by gang members and violent offenders when they entered the adult system.
“The most tragic cases almost always involve teenagers and young men. The inmates become tools for gangs or victims of rape within the system. I've witnessed this,” Martinez said in his testimony.
Late changes to the bill pushed by Republican Sen. Todd Weiler required that a juvenile receive legal counsel when a motion is made to transfer them to adult prison.
The bill passed with several other provisions, including an expansion of recidivism data collection. Lisonbee wants to include data on arrests and jail time. This was met with criticism from those who work in the criminal justice system because someone can be arrested or held in jail without being charged or convicted.
Critics like Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill believe this will skew data and misrepresent Utah’s crime situation.
“Well, my initial takeaway is, data is great, the more information we can have, the better we are,” he said. “But my secondary concern is, then, how do we use that data and for what purpose?”
He’s concerned it could get used as a political tool to push Utah to write harsher laws and increase penalties rather than investing in programs that would rehabilitate them. In recent years, Utah has passed more bills that increase penalties for crime.
It remains Lisonbee’s contention that the extra data will be used in an alternative recidivism metric only for legislators to better inform criminal justice policy.
“We're not actually including it as part of the data set that would go into our recidivism number as a state, because we want to be more comparable to other states.”
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
