Committee reviews H.2 draft 4.1: raises minimum juvenile jurisdiction age, delays Raise the Age to 2027 and adds Red Clover reporting

Members of a legislative Judiciary committee reviewed draft 4.1 of H.2, a package of proposed changes to juvenile jurisdiction that would raise the minimum age for family-division delinquency proceedings from 10 to 12, eliminate a current exception that treats alleged murders as juvenile matters regardless of age, delay the scheduled implementation of Raise the Age protections, and add a data-reporting requirement for the Red Clover treatment facility.

The proposed amendments, explained by Eric Fitzpatrick of the Office of Legislative Council, would lift the lower age threshold for family-division juvenile jurisdiction from 10 to 12 and remove the statutory exception that currently allows murder allegations involving children younger than the minimum age to proceed in family court. "The proposal is that there's no exception for any particular type of offense—age limit is 12," Fitzpatrick told the committee while walking members through the draft language.

The draft also pauses the current Raise the Age effective date of April 1, 2025, and reschedules sections 5–9 to take effect two years later (the draft sets an effective date in 2027). In place of the original three progress reports requested of the Agency of Human Services (AHS)/Department for Children and Families (DCF), the committee reduced the reporting requirement to two updates (July 2026 and December 2026) and added the Senate Committee on Institutions as a report recipient.

Deputy Commissioner Erica Radke of the Department for Children and Families said the department "does believe the department can support the bill as it's written now" and asked the committee to consider a small change in section language. Lindy Boudreaux, director of DCF's Adolescent Services Unit, recommended one further drafting change related to extended jurisdiction: for 19-year-olds, she suggested aligning the end of extended juvenile jurisdiction with existing youthful-offender practice by setting the end of jurisdiction at age 22 for that subgroup rather than using a separately calculated six-month period.

Committee members discussed how the changes would operate in practice. Fitzpatrick and others clarified that, under current law, family-division jurisdiction begins at age 10 for most delinquency matters and criminal prosecutions commonly begin at age 14; the draft would make 12 the new lower bound for family-division juvenile matters. Committee members also noted that competency determinations commonly remove some 10- and 11-year-old cases from adjudication. A committee member cited Vermont Family Court procedures allowing competency determinations in delinquency proceedings.

The draft struck an earlier transitional plan provision for persons already in adult criminal proceedings and left that matter to courts and practitioners, citing prior experience when the state previously adjusted age boundaries (the committee heard that courts and practitioners had developed local procedures that were satisfactory in a prior transition for 18-year-olds).

The bill would add a new data requirement to the progress reports asking AHS/DCF to include utilization and outcome data for the Red Clover treatment facility: monthly and annual utilization counts, average lengths of stay, treatment needs of admitted youth, and demographic data including race and gender. DCF officials said they already provide some of that data to the deputy secretary and were willing to include it in the statutory report.

Committee leaders said they would present the revised draft (to be circulated as version 5.1) to the Senate Judiciary Committee and to the Human Services Committee for review; no formal committee vote on the draft was recorded in the transcript. The chair said the presentation to Senate Judiciary was scheduled for the next morning to surface any red flags before crossover and to consider whether additional technical edits would be needed.

Implementation and next steps remain subject to legislative action. Committee members debated whether to separate the delay of Raise the Age from other jurisdictional and youthful-offender provisions; some members said they favored splitting measures, while others said the combined package made political and practical sense. DCF officials and the committee discussed wording for a reporting phrase describing services "to help children, particularly 18- and 19-year-olds, transition to adulthood," and agreed to ask witnesses which phrasing they preferred for the statutory report.

No formal motions or roll-call votes were recorded on the draft during the session. The committee planned to circulate an updated version and return to the matter after receiving input from Senate Judiciary and Human Services.