So-called Raise the Age bills are tee’d up for the governor’s desk. The House and Senate passed their versions of the bills today. Now lawmakers will work behind the scenes to decide which version of each bill will go to Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The bills would stop the practice of automatically treating 17-year-olds who have committed crimes as adults. Instead a person wouldn’t be considered an adult until they were 18 – unless the prosecutor intervened.
Republican Senator Peter Lucido is a bill sponsor. This has been his passion project for years.
“After almost five and a half years, or five years let’s call it for the sake of an argument today, yeah it’s overdue and needed.”
Michigan is one of four states that still treats 17-year-olds as adults.
