Us open map merion3/11/2023 ![]() Kercher of the Criminal Justice Center of Sam Houston State University wrote that these laws are often referred to as "Romeo and Juliet laws", though they defined Romeo and Juliet as only referring to an affirmative defense against prosecution. ![]() Ī backlash among the public occurred when some teenagers engaging in close-in-age relationships received punishments perceived by the public to be disproportionate, and thus age-gap provisions were added to reduce or eliminate penalties if the two parties are close in age. After the 1995 Landry and Forrest study concluded that men aged 20 and older produced half of the teenage pregnancies of girls between 15 and 17, states began to more stringently enforce age-of-consent laws to combat teenage pregnancy in addition to preventing adults from taking advantage of minors. The laws were designed to prosecute persons much older than their victims rather than teenagers close in age therefore prosecutors rarely pursued teenagers in relationships with other teenagers even though some laws made close-in-age teenage relationships illegal. In 1998 Mississippi became the last state to remove the chastity provision from its code. Until the late 20th century many states had provisions requiring that the teenage girl must be of "chaste character" in order for the sexual conduct to be considered criminal. By 2015 ages of consent were gender independent. Īge-of-consent laws historically only applied when a female was younger than her male partner. The last two states to raise their age of general consent from under 16 to 16 or higher were Georgia, which raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 in 1995, and Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001. Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7. states, the laws have widely varied across the country in the past. While the unrestricted age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all U.S. The data below reflects what each jurisdiction's legislation actually means, rather than what it states on the surface.
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