Your phone buzzes during work. It's the school. Your stomach drops before you even answer because the tone in the assistant principal's voice tells you this isn't about a missed permission slip. Your kid said something - maybe in the cafeteria, maybe in a text to a friend, maybe as what they thought was an obvious joke - and now theres talk of police involvement. Terroristic threats. The word sounds impossibe when connected to your fourteen year old.
Here's what nobody at that school meeting is going to tell you: in September 2024, New Jersey authorities arrested a ten-year-old in Franklin Township for making threats. Not suspended. Arrested. If you think your child's age protects them from real criminal consequences, the past year of juvenile prosecutions across this state says otherwise.
What New Jersey Actually Charges When Kids Make Threats
The statute is N.J.S.A. 2C:12-3. It sounds bureaucratic until you read what it actually says. Terroristic threats in New Jersey is a third-degree crime - the same classification as some assaults and drug offenses - carrying up to five years in a juvenile detention facility. And here's the part that catches parents completley off guard: the prosecution doesn't have to prove your child intended to follow through on anything.
New Jersey uses whats called a "reckless disregard" standard. Meaning if your kid made a statement that a reasonable person could interpret as threatening, and they were reckless about whether it would cause fear - that's potentially enough. Not actual intent to harm. Not a real plan. Just recklessness about how the words would land.
The legal language trips up families constantly. "Reckless" doesn't mean your kid carefully considered the risks and decided to proceed anyway. Under New Jersey criminal law, acting recklessly means consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifable risk. So when your fourteen year old posts something online without thinking - genuinley without thinking about how it would be recieved - prosecutors can still argue that failing to think at all constitutes recklessness. The standard is lower then most parents assume.
This creates a strange paradox that most lawyers won't explain clearly. A kid who says something absolutley outlandish - "I'm going to blow up the entire planet" - might actually have a stronger defense then a kid who says something more specific and believable. The absurdity itself can negate the "reckless disregard" element because no reasonable person would beleive the threat was genuine. Meanwhile the kid who says somthing that sounds more realistic faces a harder fight precisely because it sounds credible.
Parents come in focused on the wrong question. They want to prove there kid didn't "really mean it." But the statute doesn't care much about deep intentions - it cares about recklessness and reasonable interpretation. Thats the framework you have to work within, weather you like it or not.
The Interrogation Already Happened Before You Knew
Heres the part that makes experienced criminal defense attorneys furious. By the time you got that phone call, your child had probably already been questioned. Not by a teacher. Not by the principal. By the School Resource Officer - who is a sworn law enforcement officer with arrest powers wearing a badge and carrying a gun in your child's school.
The legal distinction matters enormously. When that SRO pulled your kid into an office and started asking questions about the "threat," they weren't conducting a disciplinary conversation. They were conducting a police interrogation. And your child - nervous, scared, wanting to explain and make it all go away - probably said everything the officer needed to hear.
What this typically looks like:
- SRO "asks to speak" with your child in private office
- No parent notification before questioning begins
- Child isn't told they can refuse to answer
- Conversaion feels informal but is being documented word for word
- Everything said gets included in police report that follows your kid forever
The legal protections that should apply get murky in school settings. Miranda rights kick in when someone is in "custody" - when a reasonable person wouldn't feel free to leave. An adult at a police station clearly understands their trapped. A fourteen year old called to the SRO's office? They think there going to get in trouble if they don't cooperate. They don't realize staying silent is even an option. Most kids don't even know they have the right to say nothing.
Schools have figured out how to use this ambiguity. The questioning happens in a room thats technically not a holding cell. The officer asks questions in a tone thats technically not threatening. The child answers because they've been taught there whole life to respect authority and tell adults the truth. By the time parents get involved, the damage is already done. Your kid confessed to something they barely understand, and that confession is now sitting in a police file.
Now here's a critical brightline that firms like Spodek Law Group immediately look for: your childs age at the time of questioning. Under New Jersey law - specifically N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-39 - children under fourteen must have a parent present for any confession to be admissable. That's not a suggestion. Thats a rule that can make statements dissapear from the evidence entirely.
But kids fourteen and older? They can waive Miranda rights on there own. Even if they don't fully understand what their waiving. Even if no parent was contacted. Even if they were crying and terrified. The system treats them as capable of making that choice - and that choice, once made, is extremely hard to undo.
One more thing nobody tells parents about the police station: when investigators leave you alone in a room with your child to "have a private conversation," that conversation isn't private. There is no parent-child priviledge in New Jersey criminal proceedings. That room may be recording. Every word you say trying to get your kid to "just tell the truth" can become evidence. Parents inadvertantly get there own children convicted trying to help them.
How Prosecutors Turn One Bad Moment Into Multiple Felonies
Prosecutors in New Jersey have learned something about juvenile threat cases: charging decisons create leverage. So instead of filing one charge and pursuing it straightforwardly, they often stack charges to maximize pressure toward a plea.
The most common combination is terroristic threats under N.J.S.A. 2C:12-3 plus false public alarm under N.J.S.A. 2C:33-3. Both are third-degree crimes. Both carry there own sentencing ranges. Suddenly one stupid thing your kid said becomes two felony-level charges, and the calculas of fighting versus pleading shifts dramatically.
What prosecutors frequently charge together:
- Terroristic threats (2C:12-3) - third degree, up to 5 years
- False public alarm (2C:33-3) - third degree, 3-5 year range
- Sometimes harassment or cyber-harassment additions depending on how message was sent
- Conspiracy charges if multiple kids where involved in the converstaion
The math works in the prosecutor's favor. Two third-degree charges means more exposure, more risk, more reasons for a scared family to accept whatever deal gets offered. Its not about proving both charges at trial - its about making trial feel too risky to even consider. Prosecutors know that most families will fold when facing the possibility of there kid getting years in detention for what started as a dumb comment.
The September 2024 arrest wave showed this pattern clearly. Glassboro saw multiple juvenile arrests. Woodbury the same. Franklin Township charged that ten-year-old. In each case, the underlying facts were kids saying things - sometimes online, sometimes at school, sometimes in messages they thought were private. The charges piled up.
For children fifteen and older, theres an additional threat that hangs over everything: waiver to adult court. New Jersey allows prosecutors to seek adult prosecution for serious juvenile offenses. While its relatively rare in pure threat cases, the possiblity exists - and prosecutors aren't above mentioning it during plea negotiations. The fear of adult court, with adult records and adult consequences, pushes families toward deals they might otherwise reject.
The Record That Doesn't Automatically Disappear
Here's the assumption that destorys families years after the case ends: they think juvenile records just go away. They don't. Not in New Jersey. Not automaticaly.
If your child is adjudicated delinquent on a terroristic threats charge, that record exists. It sits there. It doesn't seal itself when they turn eighteen. It doesn't vanish when they graduate high school. Without affirmative legal action, that record follows your child into college applications and job background checks and apartment rental screenings.
New Jersey's expungement process for juvenile records is governed by N.J.S.A. 2C:52-4.1. Here's the timeline reality:
- Your child completes there sentence or supervision entirely
- A three-year waiting period begins from that completion date
- After three years, you must affirmatively petition the court for expungement
- The court reviews and decides weather to grant the expungement request
- If granted, record is finally sealed from most background checks
Notice what's missing from that list: anything automatic. That three-year-then-petition requirement means families need to calendar it, remember it, and actually do it. Plenty of families don't. They move on with there lives, assume the record disappeared, and discover years later - often at the worst possible moment - that it didnt.
Todd Spodek has seen cases where young adults applying for there first professional jobs or graduate programs discover a juvenile record they assumed was gone. The timing couldn't be worse. A charge they barely remember from highschool suddenly threatens everything they've worked toward. Job offers get rescinded. Graduate school admissions get complicated. All because nobody filed the right paperwork at the right time.
The time to think about this isn't after the case is over. It's now. It's during the resolution of the current charge, when negotiating what the final outcome will look like, when considering whether certain dispositions leave better or worse expungement possiblities down the road.
This is why talking to someone at Spodek Law Group before you talk to anyone else matters. Before you let your child give another statement. Before you accept the school's "resolution" that might still involve criminal referral. Before you assume this will just blow over because they're young.
Your child said something that New Jersey treats as a serious crime. The SRO may have already gotten a confession. The prosecutor may be considering stacked charges. And the record, if mishandled, could follow your kid for decades.
Call 212-300-5196 before any of that gets worse.
