Conference committee letter Cheat Sheet

Raise the Age: Ending the prosecution of 18-year-old teenagers as adults
S.3221 | FACT SHEET

The Senate passed an Economic Development bill that would raise the age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 18-year-olds. This is a tremendous step but because it was not included in the House’s version of the Economic Development bill, the bill is now in a six-member conference committee to reconcile the differences in the bills passed by the House and Senate into one bill.

If Raise the Age is adopted by this conference committee, it will have the chance to pass before the year end. We got this far because of your calls, emails and meetings with your state legislators. It’s now time to ask your legislators to advocate for Raise the Age with the Conference Committee.

ACTION 1: Submit your written testimony TO THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE:

ACTION 2: Ask your State legislators to contact the conference committee directly

  • Send a letter to your state representative and senator asking them to support Raise the Age here.

Bill Information and Talking Points (choose 1 or 2 talking points only and add your thoughts):

  • Re-submit testimony you submitted September 2025 to the Judiciary Committee changing who it is addressed to (see above) and the new bill number (S.3221). Be sure to remove references to 19- and 20-year-olds as the Senate only passed Raise the Age for 18-year-olds.

  • Personalize your testimony by giving examples of how you have seen or experienced the harm to young people who went through the adult system when they were 18 whose outcomes would have been better if they had been in the juvenile system.

  • Adult legal system involvement creates significant barriers to young people in obtaining education, skills building, and career development opportunities, essentially excluding a cohort from each generation from participating in Massachusetts’ economy to their full potential. By raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction to include 18-year-olds into the juvenile justice system, this bill will improve economic outcomes for young people themselves and for the Commonwealth.

  • We’re making things worse. An overly punitive approach towards young people can actually cause more offending, resulting in the highest recidivism rate of any other age group.  This reform will decrease crime and the state’s long-term spending on the legal system and its associated costs to taxpayers. Older teens are highly amenable to rehabilitation. Their development is influenced – positively or negatively – by their environment. 

  • Annually, Massachusetts spends approximately $1.4 billion on corrections, surpassing the spending of 80% of other states in the nation. Between FY 2018 and FY 2025, state spending on adult corrections grew at a rate of 23-25%. By comparison, DYS spending grew by only 1% during this same time period.

  • Shifting legal system-involved youth from the adult criminal legal system into the juvenile system improves young people’s access to education and skills training, even if they are never incarcerated. Young people's prosecution as adults during their late adolescence derails their education, which can have serious effects on their ability to attain employment during these critical adolescent years, diminishing their lifetime earnings, and preventing them from contributing fully to the Massachusetts economy.

  • The labor market needs more young people, not less, to maintain and expand growth in our economy. However, involvement in the legal system for a young person decreases their likelihood to actively participate in the workforce for decades.  Economists have warned of the risks to Massachusetts’s economic growth due to a tight labor market – driven by an aging workforce and low unemployment. These issues pre-dated the COVID-19 pandemic but have only been exacerbated since.

  • Reducing the adult legal system’s footprint in the lives of young people will have a positive impact on their communities’ economies, tackling one of the drivers of the racial wealth gap in the Commonwealth. Young people are over-represented in our criminal justice system, and legal system involvement is concentrated in particular communities — especially low-income, Black and brown communities. This concentration depresses communities’ economic potential as a whole. Incarceration results in $326 billion in lifelong lost earnings every year for people who have spent any time in jail pre-trial or prison due to extremely high unemployment or employment instability ($111 billion) and for their children’s future earnings ($215 billion).