Youth crime in the Big Apple has more than doubled since the state’s controversial “Raise the Age Law” kicked in — despite overall dips in crime, Mayor Eric Adams’ latest annual report revealed.
The newly released Mayor’s Management Report shows drops in six of the seven major crimes across the five boroughs over the past year — but also shows that there were 5,623 felony youth arrests in fiscal year 2025, up from 2,200 in fiscal 2018 when the lax law kicked in, and 2,807 in 2021.
Youngsters are also paying the price, with crimes against youths at 5,177 during this fiscal year compared to just 2,259 in the 2021 fiscal year, the 554-page report shows.
“Mayor Adams has been clear that the ‘Raise the Age’ legislation passed by the former governor has contributed significantly to both perpetrators and victims of violent crimes being younger,” City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said in a statement Wednesday.
“That is why we continue to press state legislators to reform laws like these and ensure the public is safe and people are held accountable,” she said.
“It is unfortunate that this legislation has contributed to higher rearrests rates among youth probationers and youth arrests for felonies, but the Adams administration is committed to educating and engaging youth before they ever make contact with the justice system.”
Overall, the statistics paint a positive picture of Gotham crime trends in the 2025 fiscal year— featuring a 6% drop in murders; 17% decrease in robberies; 9% drop in felonious assaults; and a 5% dip in burglaries, while grand larceny and grand larceny auto both fell 10%.
The report also shows a 14% dip in shooting incidents, from 932 to 804 year over year, compared to the same time frame last year — and saw the fewest August shootings in the COMPStat era since those numbers were first reported in 1993.
Between last year and this year, transit arrests jumped to 25,833 compared to 14,545, while police issued 196,102 quality of life summonses this fiscal year, up from 179,673 last year and more than triple the fiscal 2021 57,876 citations — largely the result of a citywide quality-of-life effort launched by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch earlier this year.
But the youth crime stats tell a different story.
Raise the Age, signed by then -Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2017 and later backed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, was part of a series of criminal justice reforms passed by state lawmakers.
The statute raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18, and allowed suspects as old as 21 to be housed in juvenile detention facilities rather than in adult jails.
By fiscal year 2020, youth felony arrests jumped to 4,252 from 2,754 in 2019, the mayor’s report shows.
“Juvenile arrests for major felonies increased 54 percent due to the phased nature of the implementation of the Raise the Age Law,” the 2020 report by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio noted.
“The fiscal 2019 reporting period only accounted for nine months of the inclusion of 16-year-old arrestees, while the fiscal 2020 included an entire year of all 16-year-old arrestees, and nine months of 17-year-old arrestees,” the earlier report said.
The numbers dipped to 2,807 in fiscal 2021, in part due to the COVID-19 shutdown — but in subsequent years jumped from 4,037 in fiscal 2022 to the 2025 number of 5,623, the new report said.
According to the NYPD, juvenile murder arrests nearly quadrupled from eight in 2017 to 30 in 2024.
The mayor’s report said the NYPD is launching new efforts to focus on school and student safety.
“We’ll do analysis, I think, speak with the police commissioners to do the correlation between that bill and what has been happening since that bill,” Adams told The Post Wednesday when asked about the impact of the Raise the Age law on youth crime.
“Good intentions can turn out bad results,” he said. “And, you know, we have poured money into after school programs, we have poured money into summer youth employment and internships, so we don’t believe incarceration is the answer.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods
