BATON ROUGE - Despite an effort by lawmakers last year to curb crime by treating 17-year-old offenders as adults, juvenile crime is up in Baton Rouge.

"Thirteen to fifteen percent of our felony arrests are juveniles," Baton Rouge Police Chief T.J. Morse said.

While 17-year-olds have been going to adult jail for more than a year now, Morse says the 15-and-16-year-olds seem to be making up for their absence.

"You would think that we would have seen less juvenile homicide arrests because it was 17 and younger. So,we should have more in 2023 than we did in '24 — but we actually had more in '24 than we did in '23."

According to BRPD, 16 kids under 17 years old were arrested for homicide last year. That number for 2025 is already at nine.

Alexandra Singleton with TRUCE, a community organization dedicated to helping at-risk youth, works with young offenders aged 14-24 everyday.

"It doesn't really start at 17. The kids start committing crimes in middle school now a days, so we try to teach them at that age," Singleton said. 

She says the law change has put a strain on their efforts.

"It does make our cases a little harder because now we have kids that are fighting cases in both courts. You can have a kid in juvenile and you can have a kid in adult court and you're dealing with both courts, different judges. It's a strain on the parents. It's a strain on the kids, too."

One of the hopes for changing the law last year was to try and remove some of the strain on the Juvenile Detention Center by putting the 17-year-olds in the parish prison. 

"It has created some more bed space in the Juvenile Detention Center because they can get rid of the 17-year-olds, but they are still short and it's something that we're looking at," Morse said.

Morse says given the state of the system right now, the model of 'scaring kids into not committing crime because they may be put into adult jail' doesn't always work.

"Even when it leaves juvenile court and goes into the 19th JDC, we're just seeing a long time before that person will go and see any kind of courtroom, get any kind of justice for the victims. And that's not setting a good example for any other juvenile that is deciding whether or not to follow in the same footsteps."

Singleton and Morse both agree the problem can and should be addressed inside schools.

A law that went into effect Friday aims to do just that — offering mental health screenings to students and additional resources if needed.