The Anti-Racist Imperative of Infancy

This article calls for the categorical exclusion of young children from juvenile court jurisdiction as a pathway toward the abolition of the juvenile legal system in its current form. This article highlights the landscape of age-based jurisdictional boundaries across the country: 24 states have no minimum age of arrest and prosecution, while 18 states have set a minimum jurisdictional boundary of ten years old. As a result, in 2019, more than 15 percent of incarcerated youth were under the age of 14. This article explores the racialized history of juvenile courts and the current drivers of racial inequities in the system against the backdrop of developmental science to conclude that the categorical exclusion of youth under the age of 14 is a necessary and incremental step to shrink the reach and harm of the juvenile legal system.