Hartford — A comprehensive juvenile justice bill is expected to come up for a vote in the state legislature this week.

Gov. Ned Lamont held a news conference Tuesday at the East Hartford Public Safety Complex, advocating for the passage of House Bill 5417: An Act Concerning Juvenile Justice and Services, Firearms Background Checks, and Larceny of a Motor Vehicle.

Flanked by East Hartford police officers, Lamont expressed his support for what legislators are calling a bipartisan bill that would make changes to the juvenile justice system in the state and includes a gun control measure.

“I’m a strong supporter, I hope the legislature gets to this in the next week or so. It is part of a larger strategy,” Lamont said Tuesday. “Number one, our continued push to get more police on the street, on the beat ... 500 more police by the end of this year is what my goal is.”

Lamont added that judges will have more information due to the bill, so as to determine “Who is a first time offender ... and who is a repeat offender. And those repeat offenders, for their own safety and for the safety of their community, make sure they get arraigned and if detention is appropriate, something appropriate along those lines.”

State Republicans made juvenile crime their party’s marquee issue in the months leading up to the current legislative session. And Lamont and top state Democrats have introduced a variety of measures to stem gun violence. HB 5417 represents a confluence of several of both parties' top proposals.

According to the Office of Legislative Research bill analysis, HB 5417 would allow for "more immediate arraignment and services for juvenile offenders, electronic monitoring in certain circumstances, expansion of provisions imposing upon a child special juvenile probation in the case of murder or first degree manslaughter, and expansion of programs serving juveniles and reducing crime, and require the Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection to inform the Chief of Police or other appropriate official of the town in which a firearms permit applicant resides if such applicant fails a background check."

The bill would increase the maximum time, from six hours to eight hours, that a juvenile can be held in lockup without a detention order from a judge. The legislation also addresses an issue Republicans have been raising for months, as it extends access to juvenile delinquency case records and proceedings to municipal agency employees and state and municipal law enforcement officials conducting investigations, respectively.

State Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, said Tuesday that he believes the majority of Republicans support the bill, and echoed Democrats in calling it a “bipartisan effort.”

Asked whether he was satisfied with what Republicans are getting after lobbying for reform for months, Fishbein said he is, “but I don’t think the work is done.”

“There’s a lot of other things that need to be addressed, such as adjudicating juveniles in the court system where the incident is alleged to have occurred, addressing more automatic transfers to adult court, those kinds of things,” he said Tuesday. “The work is not done, but it’s a good step forward.”

Pushback from the left on the bill revolves around provisions such as one allowing judges to order GPS monitoring of arrested children if “charged with a second or subsequent motor vehicle or property theft delinquency offense and released into the custody of his or her parent or guardian (or another suitable person or agency).”

The Community First Coalition, which is convened by the CT Black and Brown Student Union, a coalition of community youth organizations including New London’s Hearing Youth Voices, submitted testimony in March. The group, as well as some Democratic legislators, opposed several parts of the bill, one of which would transfer “high-risk repeat” youth offenders to adult court.

“The campaign to criminalize Black and Brown youth by making it more likely they are treated as adults is one of the ways the school-to-prison pipeline is codified,” the coalition said in its testimony.

The coalition said it felt the juvenile crime proposals now in HB 5417 would increase “the likelihood of children being placed in detention facilities.”

Lamont responded to critics from the left who argued that this bill criminalizes youth by saying, “I think it’s bunk.”

“We can find the right response for each and every one of those kids,” he said Tuesday. “I’m not looking to put kids in adult prison.”

The governor went on to say that the bill funds diversionary programs apart from detention.

Republicans began a concerted push for juvenile justice reform by focusing on car thefts, which have gone back down in the state after spiking during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The bill “establishes a new penalty structure for larceny of a motor vehicle, with graduated penalties based on whether it is a first or subsequent offense, rather than based on the vehicle’s value as under current law.”

The bill also would increase penalties for car thefts with each infraction in order to stop repeat offenders.

The only portion of the bill that has to do with guns is when somebody purchases a firearm and they fail a background check, the state notifies the municipality where the applicant lives.

Democrats downplayed the politics when asked whether their support for a bill that includes several Republican proposals comes because it’s an election year.

“There were some modifications that could’ve been made, such as the sharing of information and data, which we did a couple months ago in the off-session, and the idea of keeping someone a couple hours longer so you could find their parents, I think we all think we can get our arms around that,” House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Tuesday. “For some people yes, there’s going to be a political advantage to maybe saying we did something about it. ... We want to work with people, and if we can make common-sense reforms that don’t set us back 15 years, then I’ll support those.”

Fishbein said he hoped Democratic support wasn’t political. But, he said, “juvenile crime has dramatically increased over the last decade. We could have done this bill or something similar last session, but we are doing something this session, in an election year.”

House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and Lamont said they expect the bill to come up for a vote within the next week.

s.spinella@theday.com