The Georgia House on Friday passed a bill to create a special committee to study raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include 17-year-olds, but stopped short of taking action to prevent 17-year-olds from being tried as adults.
House Bill 1061, originally written to shift 17-year-olds away from the adult criminal justice system to juvenile courts, unanimously passed the House after it was condensed from a 23-page bill into a 3-page measure that creates an “organizational committee” tasked with studying how Georgia could make the transition.
Concord Republican state Rep. Beth Camp, the bill’s sponsor, said when she presented the stripped-down version to the House Juvenile Justice Committee, which she also chairs, that the new version focuses on figuring out if the changes are possible.
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