Lentol reveals how he got ‘Raise the Age’ passed
Lawmaker waged 12-year fight to save juvenile offenders
State Assemblymember Joe Lentol was walking out of the state Capitol in Albany one day when a woman came up to him and gave him a big hug. “Thank you for saving my son’s life,” she told him. The brief encounter made him cry.
It turned out that the woman had a teenage son who had been in trouble with the law. She hugged Lentol, the leader of the Assembly’s Brooklyn delegation, to express her undying gratitude to him for his successful effort in getting the State Legislature to pass a bill to keep the cases of young offenders in Family Court rather than Criminal Court.
“It’s not often that you pass a bill and get a reaction like that,” Lentol (D-North Brooklyn) told the Brooklyn Eagle over a meal at Peter Luger’s in the Williamsburg section of his district.