In September 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the D.C. Criminal Reforms to Immediately Make Everyone Safe Act (D.C. CRIMES Act) by a vote of 240-179. One of the D.C. Crimes Act’s provisions is a redefinition of who counts as a youth offender in the nation’s capital. Right now, the Youth Rehabilitation Act (YRA) in D.C. extends youth offender status to individuals up to age 24, which allows judges to give out sentences with the offender’s developmental level in mind and makes it legally possible for youth offenders to clear their permanent record.
The D.C. CRIMES Act would not eliminate the YRA, but it would amend it by changing the definition of ‘youth offender’ from anyone under 25 to anyone under 18, leaving the 18-24 age group without its protections. While the bill is framed as a public safety response, the legislation raises a question that is both empirical and moral: when someone is legally an adult but neurologically still developing, what does justice actually require?
That question matters because, while nearly all states over the past decade have moved away from prosecuting older teens as adults and toward methods of rehabilitation, Congress is pushing D.C. in the opposite direction. How we respond will influence not only the capital, but also the broader American approach to accountability and restoration for the youth in our nation.
Development Is Not a Deficiency
Scripture presents humans as being image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27), and because of this, creatures who bear inherent dignity. Scripture also reminds us that we are creatures who grow. Luke 2:52 notes that even Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature,” suggesting that development is not a deficiency to overcome, but a feature of God’s handiwork meant to be understood and approached with care. This truth should prompt us to see harms committed by adolescents and young adults not as complete moral failures, but as reflections of less developed character.
Science highlights this very thing. The brain’s prefrontal cortex, which plays a crucial role in impulse control, risk assessment, and long-term reasoning, does not fully mature until the mid-20s. While this does not excuse harmful behavior, it is a fact about human development that must be accounted for if justice is something we want to achieve.
Public justice holds that government exists to uphold the common good and protect the dignity of every person, especially the most vulnerable. This vision recognizes that accountability and restoration go hand in hand. A justice system shaped by this vision does not treat punishment as an end in itself, but asks what response will actually reduce future harm, rebuild what has been broken, and honor the God-given dignity of everyone involved including those whose moral development is still incomplete.
D.C.’s Youth Rehabilitation Act (YRA) was built on these exact grounds. The YRA provides judges with discretion to assign sentences based on a young person’s developmental stage, while also offering unique rehabilitative services that pave a path to clear their record upon successful completion of their sentence. This approach treats youth not as offenders to be dealt with and dismissed, but as humans to be shaped and restored.
A Uniform Response to a Non-Uniform Population
The D.C. CRIMES Act moves in the opposite direction. It requires that sentences for youth offenders match adult mandatory minimums, removes judges’ ability to consider individual circumstances, and even prohibits the D.C. Council from changing this policy down the line. The bill passed the House with 30 Democrats joining Republicans in support and now awaits a Senate vote, where its fate remains uncertain.
Its policies, however, apply a uniform response to a non-uniform population. Researchers from the National Institute of Justice have found that young adults ages 18 to 24 are cognitively more similar to juveniles than to fully mature adults in their offending patterns, capacity for self-regulation, and life circumstances.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research has found that treating individuals who fall into this range the same as those who are fully developed actually undermines the rehabilitative goals that make communities safer, with comparable young people being 34% more likely to be rearrested for subsequent crime when processed through the adult system rather than the juvenile system. The reason for this increase in likelihood is not hard to understand. When young people are incarcerated under adult conditions, they lose access to education, counseling, and family contact, which isolates them from crucial resources and pushes them toward crime-oriented networks of people, often resulting in not a safer community, but a more dangerous one.
Making Room for Restoration
Government’s responsibility in this conversation is not simply to punish harm but to respond in ways that actually reduce harm in the future, and ultimately uphold the dignity of every person involved. That means preserving judicial discretion so judges can weigh a young person’s developmental status, investing in rehabilitative programs that have proven to reduce the odds of reoffending, and resisting legislation that removes the autonomy of local communities that know their environment best.
Government, though, cannot do this alone, and the idea of public justice recognizes that it was never meant to. Churches, families, community organizations, and mentorship programs are often in better positions to support and walk alongside young people who exist in this vulnerable developmental space. These communities can provide accountability, stability, and formation that formal systems cannot always replicate. When government implements policies that allow for these public justice communities to flourish, the results are more just and more effective than punishment alone can produce. However, the D.C. CRIMES Act, in mandating adult sentencing and removing judicial discretion, does not create that space, but instead, it closes it.
What Faithful Engagement Asks of Us
The D.C. CRIMES Act may not make D.C. a safer place. But the deeper issue it raises is not merely one of policy effectiveness, but instead, it is a question of how we see the people most affected by it.
The Christian call is not to be naïve or overly forgiving in response to harm. The harm that young people bring to this world is real, and the people they hurt deserve to be taken seriously. But faithful engagement also requires grace, the kind that recognizes a person who caused harm might not yet be a finished product.
A justice system that fails to make room for that grace is one that seems to be missing the mark. The question before Congress, and before all of us, is not whether people ages 18-24 should face consequences. They should. The question is whether our response to harm will leave room for the possibility that they can become something more than the worst thing they have ever done.
Aiden Magee is a senior at Baylor University studying philosophy, professional writing and rhetoric, and religious studies. His work explores justice, moral responsibility, and the intersection of faith and public life.
Graphic by Center for Public Justice / Source Photo by Pgiam from Getty Images Signature, accessed with Canva Pro.
