Maine City Taking the Right Steps to Address Juvenile Crime

Lewiston, Maine is made national news in 2023 when a mentally disturbed man went on a killing spree, murdering 18 residents and wounding 13 others. The shootings spurred the Democrat-controlled legislature to pass several gun control measures, including a three-day waiting period on gun sales and expanded background checks on some private sales, and was the primary motivation for a “red flag” referendum approved by voters last year. 

Lewiston is now dealing with another wave of shootings, but city officials aren’t demanding more gun laws aimed at lawful owners. Of the 19 shootings in the city this year, 12 are believed to have been committed by juveniles. At least seven of those suspects have previously been charged with felony offenses, and local authorities are now calling on the legislature to make some significant changes to the state’s juvenile justice system. 

As revealed in previous community meetings, the city’s contingent has learned that juveniles are often found not competent to stand trial, meaning charges are often dismissed and juveniles returned home to the same environment without intervention. 

That is why [City Administrator Bryan] Kaenrath has brought stakeholders together including the police department, district attorney’s office and others to develop possible legislative actions. 

Those actions include expanding judicial authority to commit repeat violent juvenile offenders to Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland; requiring that the district attorney reviews cases before high-risk repeat offender juveniles are released; requiring additional court options when juveniles do not comply with treatment; and creating a restoration program with regular court review.

Toward those changes, Kaenrath will work with police, the district attorney’s office and Lewiston’s legislative delegation to amend specific existing legislation related to court authority over detention, treatment, probation and competency restoration.

The legislative lobbying is part of a “Community Engagement and Accountability initiative” announced by Kaenrath this week that also includes a request to the city council for $200,000 in police overtime, using the police department’s Mobile Command Unit as a satellite police station, and expanding the “saturation” policing in crime hot spots. 

The initiative will make police presence unpredictable to offenders and will improve relationships between police and residents, Kaenrath said. It’s an effort that builds on success: through saturation details, police have made 28 arrests, 21 of which were juveniles, and seized 11 firearms, five of which were stolen.

The targeted deterrence policing can help on the front end, but if juveniles who are arrested for illegal gun possession are deemed incompetent to stand trial then those arrests aren’t going to have much of a deterrent effect. 

It also sounds like those who’ve been deemed incompetent to stand trial aren’t getting much help once they’ve been sent home. Lewiston Police Lt. Derrick St. Laurent told the Portland Press Herald back in May that the state Department of Health and Human Services is supposed to offer services to those deemed incompetent and “unrestorable,” but that isn’t happening on a regular basis. 

So, it’s basically just: ‘Here you go. Here are your conditions. Here is your house arrest. Don’t do it again.’ But what we’re seeing are kids that have no accountability or support.”

Some of the kids are assigned to juvenile probation officers, but like so much of the juvenile system, it doesn’t always work well. Minors are released from state with conditions, but some parents don’t follow through.

“We’re dealing with some parents that don’t care. They’re not bringing their kids to counseling appointments,” St. Laurent said. “So after so many no-shows to the counselor, they just get discharged from that counselor … that’s another crack in the system.”

Last year Lewiston police charged 272 juveniles for various crimes, and only 111 of them went to court. Of those cases, 71 percent were dismissed, most commonly because the defendant was deemed incompetent to stand trial. 

The juvenile justice system is broken, Maine’s mental health system is still not where it needs to be, and violent youthful offenders are rarely facing any kind of consequences for their actions. This is not an issue that can be addressed through storage mandates or any other kind of gun control law, and it’s good that city officials aren’t wasting time and energy pushing for new restrictions on lawful gun owners. Now the big question is whether the Democrats in control of Maine’s legislature will actually listen to them.

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