The juvenile iustice system is one of the worst parts of the criminal justice system. Not necessarily from the court side...many uuvenile systems protect the rights of the accused even better than the adult system. The realmproblem is the lack of resources available to the system. Where I work, there arebthree substance abuse facilities for adults. Kids, need to compete for out-of-county beds. The situation is worse for mental health treatment. Sometimes, wending a kid to juvi prison is the only way to get some kind of treatment going. It becomes really sad when I start to hope a kid commits a felony just so treatment options open up.
The juvenile side lacks resources. The adult side is a plea bargain machine. And there's also a complete lack of interest in improving either.
PA has 450 juveniles serving life sentences, going as low as 11-13. We had recent court scuffles with the federal courts, and SCOTUS essentially ruled that minors convicted of homicide could not be given mandatory sentences of life without parole. They can still get life sentences without parole, but it's not mandatory anymore. We have 4,134 incarcerated (316 per 100,000) in 2010, up 7 percent from . Crime is dropping, but incarceration is increasing.
It shouldn't be a surprise that a significant percent of those kids being convicted come from environments that are brutal to say the least. Molestation, drug use, etc. Basically, Child Welfare Services should have already yanked these kids out of said environments.
So, after CWS dropped the ball, until recently the
judges were selling these kids off to private prisons to line their pockets. The legal system tried damn hard to get said judges off with a slap on the wrist but thankfully that was overturned. So, yea, we have a nice hard pipeline of kids being sent to prison. No one wants to spend the money on alternative programs for kids, but they do for adults (cheaper than prison). Mostly it's kids from ghetto areas (rural areas of Appalachia and mini-Detroit cities like Coatesville or Reading) so no one cares.
If you are middle class or upper class, you can hire a lawyer and get your kid sent to therapy or whatnot by offering to pick up the tab. I know, because my sister was convicted of arson of government property as minor. She actually didn't do anything, but did not actively stop two other girls from committing arson. Which is accessory, which is legally taken as essentially the same crime. She plea bargained out (which was smart) and my folks covered therapy and costs.
If we had no resources, odds are she would have gone to jail. Because I'm not sure about Ohio, but here you essentially buy your kid's fair sentencing. And hope the judge isn't being bought or otherwise on the take. I'm fairly sure you're in the same boat (minus the being paid bribes to send kids to prison), and not by choice.
Assuming the family aren't scumbags, you're not going to turn down the family paying for a private rehab, therapy, substance abuse, whatever and that'll make a plea bargain smoother with the prosecutors. Smoother means perhaps more generous terms. Those places are however NOT cheap. Half the time they suck anyways, but it's preferable to prison. If the family is poor and can't afford expensive prison dodges, I'm guessing your options are limited to government paid alternative programs with finite capacity or prison. If you have more kids than slots, do you even have a choice NOT to send them to kiddie jail?
I'm not ragging on you, you don't have a choice. I respect the hell out of you for taking an ugly job that I know I couldn't handle. I'd beat someone to death that deserved it without a week.
