On, July 1, 2020 all delinquent acts committed by 17-year-olds began to be handled in the juvenile justice system for the entire state of Louisiana.  

A study commissioned in 2015 by the Louisiana Legislature and conducted by the Institute for Public Health and Justice (IPHI) and the Louisiana State University’s Health Science Center (LSUHSC) determined the following:

• There is a growing consensus, based on a large body of scientific evidence, that 17-year-olds are developmentally different than adults and should be treated as such. They have a far greater potential for rehabilitation and are particularly influenced – for good or ill – by the environments in which they are placed.
• The last several years of reform in the Louisiana juvenile justice system have created a capacity to accept, manage, and rehabilitate these youth in a manner that will predictably generate better outcomes than the adult system.
• In the states that have recently gone before Louisiana in raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction, and those states have found that the negative fiscal impacts on their systems was substantially less than first predicted. In fact, those states have reported substantial fiscal savings.