On Wednesday, the Senate in Kentucky passed a bill that could potentially send young offenders directly to adult court, should they be accused of certain violent felonies. Garnering 25 votes for, and 9 votes against, Senate Bill 20 specifies conditions under which defendants aged 15 or above will stand trial as adults, a circumstance that hitherto relied primarily on the discretion of judges and district attorneys. The bill defines these conditions as involvement in a “Class A, B, or C felony” in which a firearm was used, regardless of its functionality. Notable criminal acts falling within these categories comprise homicide, robbery, human trafficking, and sexual offenses.
This legislation comes as an attempt to replace Chapter 132 of An Act Relating to Children, enacted in 2021. Currently under this act, the power to transfer juvenile defendants to adult court rests with district attorneys and judges when firearms are involved in violent felonies. The law also allows for these transfers to be overruled if deemed unwarranted. Interestingly, along similar lines, Senate Bill 20 includes an amendment permitting the reversal of unsubstantiated transfers.
Pushing the bill forward, state Senator Matthew Deneen (R) expressed his belief that such a measure is required to counterbalance the “spike” in violent crime witnessed in the state during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deneen asserts that the bill aims to prioritize the needs of “victims before perpetrators”, brushing aside the fact that a report by the Kentucky State Police found overall serious crime rates in the state had actually fallen in 2022.
As it stands, the bill must now clear the Republican-dominated House of Representatives in Kentucky before being presented to Governor Andy Beshear (D) for signing. If passed, Senate Bill 20 would be one of many considerable criminal policy changes anticipated in the state. Equally noteworthy is the fact that Kentucky bears the eight-highest imprisonment rate in the United States, as reported by The Sentencing Project. The state also grapples with sizeable racial disparities in prison rates, with black residents serving time nearly four times as often as their white counterparts, according to a prison profile by the Prison Policy Initiative.