With juveniles increasingly committing murders, theft, violent assault and other serious crimes in Hennepin County, the largest county in Minnesota, some mental health advocates are pushing for the link between crime and mental health to be examined.
Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde, who also heads the Hennepin County Board Law, Safety and Justice Committee, is one of those advocates. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lunde said that he and his team on the Youth Intervention Study Group are "heavily focused on mental health when the accountability is determined by the court."
His group advocates "mental health treatments" for juveniles where necessary.
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Lunde is one of many officials in and around the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota, also known as the Twin Cities, who have spoken out publicly about the sharp rise in serious juvenile crime.
"We are not talking about stealing candy bars from stores," Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt told the Star Tribune. "These are indicators that we're in trouble."
"Kids that are living in chaos, that are living in survival mode, how receptive are they going to be to any kind of rehabilitation?" Witt said. "We need these facilities. Bring the resources to them. It doesn't have to be punitive."
"Sometimes young people make boneheaded decisions," Minn. State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion told the Star Tribune. "A setback can also be an opportunity for a comeback. How do we identify solutions that bring them back into law-abiding behavior?"
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Lunde is also focused on rehabilitation of juveniles wherever possible. But he made sure to dispel some common misconceptions about his group, which was formed by the Minnesota State legislature. For starters, advocating for mental health programs for troubled teens and juveniles is not anti-accountability, Lunde said.
"If a kid is arrested and they come to our juvenile detention center, at least in [Hennepin] County, there is a mental health assessment that's done," the commissioner said, adding that he believes that there is a strong correlation between juvenile crime and mental health problems. But that doesn't excuse teens for committing crimes, Lunde explained.
"So does that make an excuse for people who commit crimes? No. But what can we do so that if our goal is to have a kid be held accountable and then also maybe return to society, we want to try to see what we can do to fix those root causes because we can't afford to have kids that are untreated and then have a life of violence or crime or untreated trauma back in society."
"What can we do better?" Lunde asked. "How can we try to turn the needle? I think we have more and more discover that a lot of these kids have these challenges."
Lunde said that the world "post-COVID" has elevated mental health as an issue, allowing for juveniles to receive new opportunities for mental health care.
When asked about what backgrounds some of these juveniles are coming from, Lunde mentioned "addiction to drugs" and family trauma, among other difficulties.
Lunde said he was overall hopeful about turning around juvenile crime in Minnesota.
"We're hopeful the task force is going to start to be a part of the solution for some of the challenges we see," he said. "Is it going to be the whole solution? Absolutely not. But there is no magic bullet to take care of all this stuff … We're really focused on mental health. We're talking about where does the system create barriers and where can it create opportunities. Right now, there's a lot of barriers. And so we're hopeful that this will help provide the system that we need going forward and that we can start to turn the needle on some of these challenges that we see in our communities and with youth."
