New York’s 2018 criminal justice reform law that raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 is now reportedly being blamed for a dramatic rise in youth gun violence across the city.
According to data from the New York City Police Department, the number of teenage shooting victims has surged by 96 percent since the law took effect.
So far in 2025, 92 minors have been shot through September—a 21 percent increase from the same period last year. The figures stand in sharp contrast to broader crime trends: while shootings overall have dropped 20 percent since 2024 and by more than half since 2020, gun crimes involving minors have climbed steadily.
The state’s Raise the Age law, enacted in two phases between 2018 and 2019, moved most 16- and 17-year-olds charged with crimes out of adult courts and into family or youth divisions.
Supporters argue the shift was rooted in science and compassion. The state court system has defended the policy, saying that “scientific research has shown that prosecuting and placing children in the adult criminal justice system does not work.”
But many current and former law enforcement officials say the data tells a different story. They warn that the law has created a generation of emboldened young offenders who know they face limited consequences for even the most violent crimes.
Former NYPD supervisor Chris Hermann said the current system allows too many teenage shooters to avoid meaningful punishment. “We need to somehow tweak Raise the Age so when there’s shooters involved in incidents that they don’t just get a get out of jail free card,” Hermann said. “We want to see them get remanded longer term for gun-related crimes. But no politician is going to say ‘Hey, maybe it’s time [to] build a bigger, better juvenile jail.’”
NYPD data shows that arrests of teenage shooters have also skyrocketed. So far this year, 73 teens have been arrested for shootings, compared with just 30 in the same period in 2018—a 143 percent increase.
Former NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor cited several high-profile cases as evidence of the law’s failures. Among them was a Times Square shooting in August in which a 17-year-old wounded three people, and a September incident where a 44-year-old woman was struck by a stray bullet allegedly fired by a teen.
Perhaps most troubling, O’Connor said, was the case of 18-year-old Damien Calhoun, who was involved in a gunfight in East Harlem while wearing an ankle monitor from an earlier attempted murder case. “This case in East Harlem is another poster child of what’s going on,” O’Connor said. “You got an 18-year-old wearing an ankle monitor who pleaded guilty to an attempted murder shooting and he’s out. If he pled guilty, why is he out? It’s because of Raise the Age.”
Calling the situation “a complete revolving door,” O’Connor and others argue that without stronger accountability, the city risks losing control of a growing wave of violent juvenile crime.
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