Officials on Thursday toured the Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center to tout the city's implementation of a new state policy known as "Raise the Age."

Under the policy, people under age 18 who commit nonviolent crimes will no longer be treated as adults and will instead get special programming to lead them in the right direction.

One goal of the program is to prevent nonviolent youth offenders from ever getting a criminal history.

"We have the ability to bring people together and try to get them to work out their conflict so that they're not killing each other once they go back out into the community," says Louis Watts, Crossroads executive director.