I know it seems a little early to start talking about legislative agendas and procedural reform but, if not now, when should we address the issues before us in juvenile justice? As we are all aware, our clients are not a very influential constituency when it comes to reforming our system so, as our publication’s title proclaims, let us advocate for a few minutes.
While some may express that individual “responsibility,” being held “accountable,” and receiving a “good swift kick” are the remedies for our troubled youth, I take a more systemic approach. In juvenile justice we do some things quite well, and in other areas we are not as competent. If you need to collect DNA samples from a thousand people in ninety days for example, we can do that. That’s a quantifiable, measurable, time-limited experience that is achievable – it has all four components of the secret mantra for planning and management. If we need to train thousands of people in confidentiality, we can do that – once the computerized infrastructure has been purchased, using technology to work smarter not harder is feasibility facilitated. But then there are those messy areas where we don’t exactly offer our best profile. If it weren’t for the clients’ deficits, we would do just fine managing ourselves inside and out of the paperless castles we have built. We haven’t seemed to have learned how to account for human frailty and disorder, or to use our policies and organizational structures to promote adjustment, adaptation, and improvisation based on the changing dynamics of the clients and families we serve.
Peering into my crystal ball, I look past the changes in gang laws and hate crime legislation. I see beyond the raising of case rates and billable hours. Beyond organizations that band together to promote a healthy whole of the combined parts, using conferences as a springboard toward professional diversity – yes, we can host other groups at our conferences. I see before us a time that may become, if nothing else but by necessity, client-focused. Imagine that - a system of service provision based on what the clients need.
So what do we know about our clients and how can we use that information? That is the question. Here’s my list of the top challenges we need to get people talking about before the General Assembly and the Congress start thinking up their own ideas:
- We cannot be all things to all people. We need to use the top eight identified criminogenic factors to focus our effort only on those primary factors that we know influence delinquency. And we need to use what we know. Agencies should be compelled to utilize available research data and base their planning toward specific measurable outcomes.
- Crime and Mental Health are no longer four words. We need to improve the responsiveness of mental health and substance abuse service provision in our communities. Competence issues abound in the legal system for children. The mental health needs of children before the court requires specialized assessment and should be considered a priority and prior to any hearing. A rapid assessment for imminent harm to self or others for a Temporary Detention Order is quite different than an eleven year-old who reads on the 2nd grade level and who suffers depression from years of physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse regardless the crime they may have committed.
- We should rely upon meta-analysis data of program effectiveness and direct funding toward programs that are proven effective, including examination of the factors that may potentially do harm due to inadequate/inaccurate frequency of service or quantity of service being provided.
- We have a system with a reported cost of $100,707 per year, per child in a JCC, and a trend since 1998 indicating a reduction in Average Daily Population. If we have the beds available and an internal Length of Stay mechanism to retain or release, we may end up just maintaining the status quo. We should fund alternative direct care programs as local placement options under the Comprehensive Services Act, and at the same time, we can improve the state’s Juvenile Correctional Centers’ effectiveness by fully funding the social learning theory-based REACH program.
- Children being released from the JCC’s should have unfettered access to mental health services and to an uninterrupted supply of psychotropic medication similar to if they were being released from a psychiatric hospital. Look at the data on incoming diagnoses. It isn’t about paying for someone else’s children, it is about providing for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to provide the necessary and sometimes, expensive medication needed by the children we all have an interest in. We can choose to help children learn to manage their disorders and illnesses, or we can build more prisons.
- Children are confused by the many adjudicatory options regarding guilt and innocence, plea bargains in particular. On television you are found guilty, innocent, or a jury is “hung.” We may be able to use that cultural denominator to our advantage. However, in real life, a juvenile defendant can admit to committing a crime, plead guilty to the crime, give testimony that confirms other evidence that they are indeed guilty, and then the charge can be nolle prossed, the matter may be taken under advisement (whatever that may mean to a fourteen year old), you can be placed on supervised probation for a crime without being found guilty of the underlying offense, or it can be dismissed because the judge remembers a time when the court of second chances really meant that. We should provide Carnegie Education Units of instruction annually for attorneys, specifically in current juvenile and adolescent development research. We should be straightforward with young people and tell them what we know: we weren’t born yesterday, we do have eyes in the back of our heads, and they need to stop whining.
- Commonwealth Attorneys still appear to seek transfer of too many cases to be tried as adults. Children are not wired the same way as adults. That may be hard to understand but let’s start by recognizing that it is true. We should create a database to examine the frequency and the types/disposition of such cases by jurisdiction. We should establish legislation to automatically re-hear a consideration for transfer just prior to age 21 after a juvenile has served a preliminary commitment with DJJ. Similar to blended sentencing, but we can wait and establish the second part after we determine if the child has been amenable to treatment and has shown substantial, verified rehabilitation effort (GED, no institutional offenses, work/study, and the like). We can use the same considerations, but we get a chance to see what he or she looks like with a few more years of maturity and growth. That way we allow for a pre-sentence report that incorporates the concept that children are not small adults, and that youthful offenders can and do change.
- There were 92,000 juvenile intakes including 20,000 felony intakes in FY2006. We need swift application of services in response for those children not being detained (only approx. 17,500 children were detained for all reasons). We should re-direct and increase Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act funds to establish permanent field officers attached to each Court Service Unit for curfew checks, drug screens, school attendance, and the like, and to provide groups for families and offenders on the process of the court proceedings in general, what happens while they are waiting hearing, and what dispositional options are before the court. While we’re at it, let’s coordinate our services with our universities and colleges, so that research is used to help us to direct funding more effectively. If Family Assessment and Planning Teams agree that a family needs service, they should be able to go get that service.
- Children should be unrestrained while in court unless a hearing is held (in camera) to determine the need for such level of security. This is for the defendant’s benefit, not because I believe there is undue bias on the part of the court’s practitioners. Children need to be taught and treated with respect, dignity, and common courtesy unless they are convincingly an imminent danger to self or others. And children, lest we forget our own childhood, act in their self-interest most of the time. A child in shackles often hears, “If you agree to first offender status for this charge…blah, blah, blah…you lose your license for one year…blah, blah, blah….” But, what they are thinking is, “I agree to whatever this fool judge is saying that gets me out of these handcuffs, then I’ll go smoke a joint and get up with my girlfriend.”
So forget your notions about meaningful salary adjustments, better training, higher entry-level standards, and the like. We do those things quite well. If it can be boxed, sorted, counted or otherwise contained we already do those things. What we need is to develop a system responsive to change. When that intake worker comes to you and says, “I have nowhere for this child to go tonight,” we need to know what to do. Everyone belongs somewhere on this planet. Our simplest form of advocacy is best accomplished from the depth of our convictions, not from the height of our logic. We advocate for children who committed illegal acts but there are no illegal children.
Ron Telsch is a Probation Supervisor in the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice's 25th Court Service Unit (covering Lexington, Covington and Botetourt).
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