CARTHAGE, Texas—A case of beer, a bucket of change, and two fireworks changed the course of Cody McCary’s life.

In a Denny’s restaurant in Carthage, Texas, McCary, 35, looked down at a plate of eggs and tugged a white cowboy hat over sad eyes. He was recounting a two-decade-old mistake that’s followed him ever since.

When McCary was 17, police arrested him after he broke into a neighbor’s store and stole a handful of items while out drinking one night with friends. The ill-conceived teenage adventure became a lifelong burden when authorities charged McCary with four felonies.

The state of Texas is one of six states that charge 17-year-olds as adults. McCary spent a year in state jail. He’s stayed out of trouble since then, but nearly 20 years later, he still has a record as a convicted felon.

For McCary, that’s meant decades of difficulty finding a job and taking care of his family. When oil prices are high, he finds work in the fields. When prices fall, he competes for other jobs with workers who don’t have a felony record. McCary had a lead on a job as a school janitor, but it fell through because of his teenage conviction.

When McCary’s wife tragically died in an automobile accident last fall, he discovered new hurdles: As a convicted felon, he’s not allowed to manage his wife’s estate. A friend and Christian mentor volunteered to be the executor, but the experience was another tough blow during a particularly hard time.

“The list of what I can do is shorter than what I can’t do,” says McCary. “I’ve never experienced the full liberty of America as an adult.”

‘The list of what I can do is shorter than what I can’t do.’

—Cody McCary

As Jamie Dean shows in "New convictions" in this issue, the problems of our criminal justice system are deep and severe—but improvements in dealing with young offenders and improving the public defender and bail systems can make a huge difference.

One basic question: Do nonviolent teens need to go to adult prisons with decades-older men or women who have years of criminal experience?

Some legislators and reformers are proposing that young, nonviolent offenders who acted with teenage idiocy should have greater access to rehabilitative services or juvenile courts rather than quick tickets to prison.

Texas automatically charges 17-year-olds as adults, but in April a Texas legislative committee approved a bill to put the age of criminal responsibility back to 18. New York’s legislature on April 10 voted to raise that state’s age of responsibility from 16 to 18, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed that into law. One factor driving the reconsideration is the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) that requires prisons to keep 17-year-olds away from older inmates “by sight and sound.” These requirements have become prohibitively costly to implement.

Lindsey Linder of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition says a rehabilitative approach for some younger teens could be a “win-win,” since access boosts the odds youth will avoid future crimes and stay out of jail. Texas Appleseed, a justice policy think tank, found that most 17-year-olds who go to prison are convicted of relatively minor crimes such as small-time theft or drug possession, but those offenses carry a lifetime of consequences. Once teens go to prison, they are more likely to be rearrested for violent or other crimes than teens who enter the juvenile system and may have supervised probation in their own communities, with more family involvement.