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Committee narrows mental state for proposed child-neglect crime to ‘recklessly,’ wins unanimous support
Summary
A New Hampshire House committee advanced a revised version of HB257 that changes the proposed criminal mental state from negligent to reckless after testimony from law enforcement and child-protection advocates; committee adopted the amendment and voted to pass the bill as amended.
A House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday approved a change to HB257, a bill proposing a new criminal offense for neglect of a child, replacing a negligent mental-state standard with a reckless one.
The committee adopted a replace-all amendment that reworks the bill to penalize reckless conduct that places a child at substantial risk of harm. Detective Sergeant Alex Marvin of the Newport Police Department, who testified to the committee, said a reckless standard would be a compromise that “will give us more tools” to intervene in recurring dangerous situations where civil remedies had not protected children.
Why it matters: The change narrows the group of cases that would be criminalized compared with a negligence standard while lowering the bar from…
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