CHICAGO -- At this week's World Congress on Justice with Children, Illinois experts and researchers shared ways the U.S. could work to get back in step with international norms.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 30 years ago adopted a standard to set a minimum age of criminal responsibility, meaning kids younger than a certain age cannot be arrested and referred to the justice system.

Lisa Jacobs, program manager of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice at Loyola University Chicago, said in Illinois and 21 other states, there is no minimum age, and in some others it is lower than the internationally agreed-upon 14.

"The impact, the very real and lifelong impact of interactions with these legal systems, starting with policing and arrest, it really highlights the urgency with which we must approach setting minimum ages, and raising the ages where they are set currently too low," Jacobs contended.

Jacobs noted there are profound racial disparities in the data of arrests of young children. Black people make up less than 15% of Illinois' population, but 60% to 62% of arrested children age 10 to 13 are Black.

Elizabeth Clarke, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Initiative, said ensuring due-process rights for children who are arrested is a key issue in Illinois and elsewhere in the U.S. She argued the Miranda warning is not child-friendly, and pointed to task-force studies in Chicago showing the police department does not prioritize the legal rights of children.

"If the Miranda warnings are to mean anything, they mean that a child should have a lawyer with them throughout interrogation," Clarke asserted. "That's what Miranda means."

She added when children are interrogated without a lawyer present, it can lead to false confessions and youths being wrongfully convicted.

Speakers said key policy changes to ensure universal representation, and a fair age of criminal responsibility would help reduce disparities and bring the U.S. closer to international standards.

Reducing the number of young people involved in the criminal justice system means working on the root causes which can lead them there. A youth justice advocacy group will host a series of events this week to address the issue.

The Connecticut Justice Alliance's #InvestInMeCT campaign was first launched in June 2020 after many discussions about a lack of investment in youth in the state, especially in communities of color.

Christina Quaranta, executive director of the Alliance, said the campaign relaunch comes at an important time, after a bill became law last month aimed at addressing a perceived youth crime wave.

"We're not paying attention to the fact that we are in a pandemic and before March of 2020, Black and brown communities were divested in, intentionally, for many years," Quaranta asserted. "The importance of addressing the root issues and investing time and money, and resources, and love and care, is more important than ever now."

As part of the week of events, the Justice Alliance has updated its report from two years ago on ending youth criminalization. Quaranta said it includes new conversations with community members the Justice Alliance has had through its "vision sessions."

The new state law increases penalties for some serious crimes, with the maximum juvenile sentence extended to up to five years. It also increases the amount of time a young person can be detained while awaiting a judge's ruling.

Quaranta explained she hopes the events can spark more discussion about the root causes of crime, such as mental health and trauma in public policy.

"For many years, Connecticut made lots of different changes to the legal system without necessarily having the opinion of those who had actually been through the system," Quaranta noted. "Hearing what people have to say about how they were affected by the legal system will inform the decisions that lawmakers make."

The Alliance vision sessions are this Tuesday through Thursday, in New Haven, Norwalk and Waterbury. They'll speak with residents about solutions working in their communities to support young people, and find out what resources are needed. The week of events culminates Friday with a celebration in Bridgeport.

From Fox News to The New York Times, media coverage over the past few years has sounded the alarm about a purported increase in violent crime among kids. However, a new report finds those claims have been false or largely overstated.

The research by The Sentencing Project reveals youth violent crime rates, in categories from murder to robbery, declined nationwide from 2019 to 2020. Ann McCullough, a Youth Justice Wisconsin project director, said her organization has noted similar declines locally, but said unfounded stereotypes still can have long-term repercussions.

"Negative stereotypes about youth, service gaps and structural racism are the foundation for the youth-related criminal-justice policy and system we have today," she said, "nationally and in Wisconsin."

To keep kids out of the system, the report's authors propose diverting young people accused of crimes into restorative justice programs, placing more counselors in schools instead of police, and providing positive development programs for kids who have gone through the system.

With the impending closure of the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons, McCullough said she believes now is the time to open a new chapter in Wisconsin's youth corrections system. However, she added, alternative programs are facing significant staffing shortages, an issue she contended could be remedied in part by new investments from lawmakers.

"Public health models for violence prevention work," she said, "but they also need to be funded and supported at the same level as our correctional system in order to see a significant change."

According to data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, juvenile arrests in Wisconsin dropped by about 70% from 2011 to 2020. Richard Mendel, who wrote the report as a senior research fellow for The Sentencing Project report, said national crime rates among kids and teens have been declining for years.

"Over the past 20 years, the share of arrests of kids under 18 has fallen by more than half, and they continue to fall," he said. "A lot of this has been tied to the pandemic. The share of crimes that were committed by kids went down - and despite that, we're seeing this narrative of youth crime 'out of control.'"

The Sentencing Project report only includes data up to 2020, the most recent year the statistics are publicly available, and its authors acknowledged future data may reveal that youth crime rates have increased since then. However, they noted that would be understandable, given the mental-health impacts of the pandemic on kids, and said they think it shouldn't serve as rationale to push for more punitive juvenile-justice policies.

New research found reports of skyrocketing youth crime are not only unfounded, but are also fueling calls for stricter punishments.

Data from The Sentencing Project showed the share of crimes in the U.S. committed by young people fell by more than half in the past two decades. It also decreased in all major types of offenses in 2020.

Richard Mendel, senior research fellow for The Sentencing Project and the report's author, said given the stress young people faced over the past two years, he would not be surprised if future data reveal a pandemic-era increase in youth crime. But he contended a temporary rise should not be used to justify returning to 'get-tough' approaches.

"This is not a moment to be panicking about youth crime," Mendel argued. "Especially if that panic is going to lead us to embrace solutions that we know the evidence shows does not work."

According to the report, juvenile detention and transfers to adult court can worsen youth outcomes. Instead, Mendel encouraged reforms to help drive young people away from delinquency, including reducing reliance on youth confinement and making stronger investments in social and mental health supports in schools and communities.

Mendel pointed out Ohio is a national model for reducing youth incarceration through RECLAIM Ohio, which offers financial incentives for counties to divert young people from Ohio Department of Youth Services institutions to community-based programs.

"Research on that is overwhelmingly positive that the kids do much better," Mendel reported. "In terms of rearrest, in terms of reincarceration, in the community programs than they do in incarceration. And yet, that program has come under attack."

A commission is reviewing the program's past three years after learning the suspect in the shooting death of a Cleveland police officer was on juvenile court probation. The youth services population dropped from a high of more than 2,600 in May 1992 to 375 in December 2020, which officials attribute to RECLAIM Ohio's success.

Meanwhile, officials in Cuyahoga County and Columbus have reported recent increases in stolen cars and carjackings among younger juveniles. But Mendel believes media coverage of youth crime is often sensationalized, and missing critical context.

"There's a lot of political opportunism that's being applied," Mendel observed. "It's important to be skeptical, and to look for context and look at the historical data. Is it really true?"

The report noted because there is no published federal data on carjackings, increases in a select number of cities do not necessarily indicate a national trend.