Raise the Age adds chaos to juvenile detention and to NYCs streets

“You go to the park to sit there and play with your friends, not to get shot.”That was 14-year-old Miral Alamouri talking to The Post about her little sister Maya, age 12, who was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout in The Bronx last month.One of the suspects, we learned last week, is 13.Violent crimes among juveniles in New York are rising fast.And thanks to the entirely foreseeable overcrowding of the city’s juvenile detention facilities, they’re about to get much worse.New York’s “Raise the Age” law, phased in during 2019, has coincided with a significant increase in juvenile crime.Compare the stats from 2020 to those of 2025: The number of juvenile rape victims went from 434 to 571, while felony assaults on kids went from 1,297 to 2,610, and robbery went from 924 to 1,570.Youth arrests have also risen substantially — for murder from 32 to 42, for instance — despite a drop in the youth population.But while their violent offenses have continued to go up, our capacity for keeping these offenders off the streets and rehabilitating them has fallen.Raise the Age forced all the 16- and 17-year-old juvenile offenders who previously would have been held on Rikers Island to be moved into one of the city’s two youth detention centers, run by the Administration for Children’s Services — Crossroads in Brooklyn and Horizons in The Bronx.That’s led to extreme crowding in both facilities.Worse, under the law these offenders were entitled to stay at the youth centers until they were tried.That left 20-year-olds living in juvenile dormitories alongside kids as young as 12.And not first-time shoplifters, but violent offenders.ACS is required to release a daily update of the number of kids in their facilities, as well as their capacity.But for years ACS has fudged the numbers.Kevin O’Connor, a retired NYPD assistant commissioner for youth strategies, has taken screenshots of those updates — and has seen the deception happen in real time.“They�...