North Carolina’s political leaders refuse to decide whether a 16-year-old is a child or an adult and they are unlikely to make a decision until 2017 at the soonest.
Until they do, North Carolina teens age 16 and 17 are caught in a strange zone between adulthood and childhood: They are adults when they commit crimes, but, because they are younger than 18, they are children when they are the victims of crimes and for most other aspects of life.
The teens’ in-between status recently drew national attention when it came to light that the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in February charged a 16-year-old of being an adult maker of child pornography for making a nude photo of herself with her cellphone last year.
The teen faced two felony charges and would have had to register as a sex offender if convicted of them. These were later dropped in a plea bargain to a misdemeanor charge in July.
