john: brand-new at 2:00, america s crime crisis kids edition. cities across the nation seeing huge spikes in violent crime committed by children and teens. sandra: instead of cracking down, democrat-led cities and states are making it even easier for teens to do the crime and serve no time. the same progresstive prosecutors for things like no cash bail in new york are branching out, bringing similar soft on crime policies to teens. critics ask why would this time be any different. john: welcome back as america reports rolls into a second hour on this friday eve. hi, sandra. john: john, great to be with you. so-called juvenile justice reforms have a lot of people scratching their heads. a 12-year-old brought a gun to school without fearing any criminal charges as a result. lawrence jones is one of the people asking how that is justice for anyone. he ll join us ahead. fox news alert. can you say how many people the white house counsel s office added to prepare for t
of criminal responsibility. here in new york, the mayor has said that he wants state lawmakers to make some serious changes to the laws, including how juveniles are charged in possession of a gun or brandish a weapon, saying they should be treated the same. john. john: really disturbing stuff. laura, thank you. sandra: bring in lawrence jones, great to have you here. you have been reporting a lot on crime, but specifically juvenile crimes. this is a trend that is rising at an alarming rate. why is this happening? a couple factors. the fact there is no respect for authority anymore, and you get no respect of authority when you don t hold people accountable. so when you have a criminal justice system that is allowing people back on the street, our young people are taking notice as well. drug dealers and the people that commit crimes allow juveniles to do those crimes because they realize the sentencing and the
accountability is much different from them, even though we are not even punishing the adult, so there is that aspect. the other thing is you have parents that are friends with their children now, there s no discipline in the household or the parents are not there at all. so all of that is creating a system where kids feel like they can get away with anything. my first job was working in juvenile court, and we were trying to get young people to turn their life around. there was scared straight, all these are second, third, fourth, and fifth chances we are giving young people. sandra: i want to put some headlines up here, it really hits home on some of the biggest issues involved with this spike in juvenile crime. florida teachers are fleeing a county with agregious student behavior like spitting, biting, drug use and theft. 15-year-old accused of pointing a loaded gun at a student in
sentencing program instead of jail, but four months later he was arrested for a loaded gun. and they talk about amended outdated laws that punish young offenders. the counter argument is wait a minute, you have a lot of statistics showing us that 16 and 17-year-olds who are now being given this more lenient treatment are committing the offenses again. last week the police commissioner of new york repeated calls for reform. we continue to operate in an environment of chronic resitivism, a system deficient in meaningful intervention for our youth. over the last several years, 47 states have raised their age