Posted on August 31, 2021
HARTFORD — House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora and state Rep. Craig Fishbein, House Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement today in response to a Judicial Branch decision to implement new procedures providing police more access to juvenile arrest record information:
“These welcomed policy and procedure changes implemented by the Judicial Branch are a direct result of the outcry and advocacy from scores of Connecticut residents who are fed up with our state’s broken juvenile justice system. The concept of giving police better access to juvenile arrest records is one House Republicans suggested during the recent bipartisan talks on the subject. This is a common sense starting point toward implementing more substantial changes to a system that lets teenagers get arrested over and over again with little to no consequence. While today’s news is positive, it’s also one that should have been implemented years ago, along with the process to detain. Sadly, there’s much more work still yet to do and we again urge our colleagues to take a fresh look out our proposals and join us in a special legislative session to begin transforming our juvenile justice system into one where prevention, accountability, rehabilitation, and the rights of victims are of equal importance.”
The new procedure outlined by the Judicial Branch here gives police the ability to secure more information when they’re working on a detention order request for a juvenile they’ve arrested and include the information on the request as it’s submitted to the court for review.
House Republicans have issued a set of proposals offering further reforms to the juvenile justice system.
