The Juvenile Lawyer

July 14th, 2009 at 01:06pm Under Juvenile Law

Sadly, today many youths get into trouble with the law. In fact, in many parts of the world and in the United States itself, this trend is on the rise. While sociologists and social workers along with the police and the courts are trying to resolve the causes of youthful delinquency, once a crime has been committed it is time to contact a juvenile lawyer.

The juvenile lawyer is special in that, in addition to a degree in law, the lawyer must possess a vast amount of patience and a fine understanding of the thought patterns of teens and other children. The reasons for this are simple. Children, like their older models, adults, lie. While it’s generally more transparent when a juvenile is being dishonest, there are often extenuating circumstances for such deception, usually involving protecting a friend or family member from incarceration, and thus emboldening the child to maintain the lie at all costs.

For this reason, juvenile lawyers have the added task of determining whether their client is the true culprit, or if he or she was influenced by an adult or an older child.
Further, the arrest itself is important. It is of great importance that the police follow proper procedure in all arrests. Due to the nature of arresting a youth, many police while polite, will often violate the legal rights of a child, feeling that a child is beneath such understanding or need of such procedure. It is the duty of the juvenile lawyer, subsequently, to determine if procedure was followed correctly, and if not, to document this and prove it in a court of law.

Moreover, sometimes getting at the truth is more than just sifting through a pile of police reports and ruminating upon the tangled cobweb of data. It is with the art of the interview where the juvenile lawyer either shines or falls flat on her face. This includes speaking not only with police officers, hospital personnel, witnesses, and other relevant people, but especially with discussing the situation with the child in question.

This involves not only gleaning information about the case from the youth, but comforting him or her, while at the same time explaining the legal situation in terms the child can understand. In some cases, juvenile lawyers have had to explain the law in simplified terms for the minds of children as young as 9 or 10 years of age.
It is no easy task, yet the juvenile lawyer also gains great joy when she can aid her clients successfully.

Juvenile Delinquency Theories

July 14th, 2009 at 07:06am Under Juvenile Law

Juvenile Delinquency Theories
Through an understanding of causes of juvenile delinquency society may come to deal preventively with delinquency; certainly treatment of the offender needs to be based upon an understanding of the causal mechanisms that have produced him. In this paper we’ll describe three theories of juvenile delinquency such as Social Learning Theory, General Strain Theory and Behavioral Theory and discuss appropriate preventive programs based upon these theories.
In 1977 Albert Bandura, a Stanford University psychology professor, published Social Learning Theory, in which he postulated that human learning is a continuous reciprocal interaction of cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors. Sometimes called observational learning, social learning theory focuses on behavior modeling, in which the child observes and then imitates the behavior of adults or other children around him or her (Wiesner, Capaldi, Patterson, 2003, p. 318).
In his research on social learning theory, Bandura studied how violence portrayed in mass media can have a tremendously negative impact on the behavior of certain types of children watching violent television shows. What he noted was that some children will observe and then imitate the behavior of the characters on the television screen. From these observations, we can conclude that juvenile delinquency is the result of imitation of aggressive actions. Bandura determined that certain types of children learn to perform violent and aggressive actions by observing and then modeling their behavior after what they have seen. He referred to this as direct learning through instantaneous matching of the observed behavior to the modeled behavior (Wiesner et al, 2003, p. 320). Therefore, social learning theory states that learning can occur through the simple process of observing and then imitating others’ activities.
Merton (1957) formulated a social strain theory of criminal involvement (Broidy, 2001, p. 10). Merton proposed that a society instills in its citizenry aspirations for upward mobility and a desire for selected goals. However, when legitimate avenues to goal attainment are blocked, anomie or strain sets in, which in turn compels the individual to violate the law in order to attain these goals. Lower-class persons are viewed by Merton as more susceptible to the ravages of anomie because they are more regularly thwarted in their efforts to participate in the economic rewards of the wider society (Broidy, 2001, p. 12).
Merton assumed in his theorizing that humans are conforming organisms who only violate the law when the disjunction between goals and means becomes so great that the individual believes he or she can no longer pursue socially sanctioned goals via legitimate channels. Society and certain social variables are, according to strain theorists, responsible for the majority of crime being committed in the world today. According to Merton, a society that emphasizes goals over the means to obtain these goals, and that restricts access to opportunities for legitimate advancement, is establishing the conditions for anomie and future criminality. Strain theorists have long argued that once a person is removed from a situation of anomie or frustration, negative behavior will recede (Henry, Tolan, Gorman-Smith, 2001, p. 173).
Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory offers a promising framework for understanding juvenile delinquency. A major type of strain, according to Agnew’s general strain theory, consists of experiencing unpleasant events or circumstances, including aversive situations at home, particularly arguments and violence (Broidy, 2001, p. 21). The theory proposes that adolescents are pressed into delinquency by negative emotional reactions that result from being situated in an aversive situation from which they cannot escape. This blockage frustrates the adolescent and may lead to desperate avoidance and/or anger-based delinquency (Broidy, 2001, p. 23).
Behavioral theory was studied by J. Watson, I. Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. It describes the outcomes of the consequences of a certain behavior on occurrence of such behavior in the future. Operant conditioning developed by Skinner is one of the learning methods according to which the likelihood of behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. In case of positive reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the effect of experiencing some positive condition. In case of negative reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the outcome of stopping or staying away from some negative condition. In case of extinction a certain behavior is becomes weaker by the outcome of avoiding to experiencing some positive condition or stopping some negative condition.
Negative and positive reinforcements and extinction strengthen certain kinds of behavior of individuals. Punishment is a big form of operant conditioning used all over the world. When people are punished, it is to decrease that certain behavior produced by the individual. Therefore, behavioral theory refers to conditioning which leads to different behavioral pattern of juvenile offenders.
Preventive programs based on the social learning theory require placing an individual in favorable environment where he/she would be less tempted to imitate violent behavior. One of the examples of such environment is the social services of the church. The actual role of contemporary religion in delinquency prevention is not easy to evaluate. Its potential role is tremendous, but the fulfillment of that potential depends on the vitality of a religion in the lives of its professants. The formulation through religion of a standardized morality that is in conformity with the law (not all religious beliefs and practices in the United States are legal, of course, but the exceptions are in small minority faiths for the most part) establishes a system of social control norms that overlap substantive legal norms (Wiesner et al, 2003, p. 320). The social services of the church can do much–and some of them do-in providing more experimental, intensive, and therapeutic assistance to delinquents than public resources customarily are equipped to perform.
Also, community behavior can influence behavior modeling of juvenile delinquents. Community organization and planning represent tremendously significant possibilities for the development of delinquency-deterring measures.
According to the General Strain Theory, the major causes of juvenile delinquency are aversive atmosphere at home and school. The emotional atmosphere, the hostilities, and the inadequacies expressed in the parent-child relationships do greater injury to the child than do physical hurts. From a preventive point of view, then, it seems clear that the greatest hope for discouraging delinquency must lie in efforts to improve the quality and harmony of the family system.
Preventive programs based on the General Strain Theory refer to effective family social work: a field designed to strengthen family life through assisting individuals and family units and, so far as possible, to improve the community circumstances essential to wholesome family living. Private agencies, and governmental services (chiefly departments of public welfare) contribute to this work; many of them today, especially in moderate-sized cities, merge child-welfare services with their family case work for more completely integrated assistance (Asetline, Gore, Gordon, 2001, p. 257).
Family counseling, which is carried on in large part by the old established social agencies but which is also coming to be practiced increasingly by individual practitioners and clinics, offers much promise and some dangers. In an area where the divorce rates alone are a sufficient indication of the widespread need for help, trained and specialized skills focused specifically on the medical, emotional, and broader psychological requirements of the family can help to resolve difficulties before they become too serious (Asetline, Gore, Gordon, 2001, p. 258). Provisions should be available in the community for the individual who feels the need for advice about his family relationships. Such facilities should be competent of course. Traditionally much of this advisory function, when performed at all (of course, many persons needing help have refrained from seeking it either out of pride or a lack of available and known resources), has been done informally by family physicians, attorneys, or friends. It hardly need be said that none of these roles, taken by itself, gives any assurance of qualification to deal with the often subtle, profound, and technical problems involved in family pathology. Today, though specialized skills for this work are being developed and counseling bureaus are being established.
One of the commonest characteristics observed among delinquent children is the dislike of school and teachers. It would seem that any real solution to this problem lies not in penalty classes or special schools with long hours-or even incarceration but in such preventive measures as vigorously attempting to adapt the educational process to the needs and interests of children. The docile rote learner-so dear to the heart of the educator-and the non-aggressive but apathetic conformist, as well as the resistant problem child, could all profit by a vitalized education. If classroom organization, program of study, and teaching methods are planned to meet the interests and needs of children and adolescents at their level of development, with rich and varied opportunities for the expression of diverse abilities and sufficient elasticity to allow the individual some freedom in adaptation, there would be far less aversion and passive indifference to school (Houchins, Guin, Schroeder, 2001, p. 110). Again it should be noted that flexible programs and good teaching are largely a matter of adequate budgets and careful selection.
Ideally every school system should have attached to it or continuously available to it the facilities of a psychiatric clinic or study home to which cases of juvenile delinquency might be referred for observation and assistance. If teachers can be trained sufficiently and selected as personalities sensitive to the needs of childhood, they should be able to refer a large proportion of unadjusted children for clinical assistance early and thus prevent the development of serious conduct problems and delinquency (Houchins et al, 2001, p. 108).
For most instances of children with psychological or conduct problems, the school must continue to provide formal education to meet their particular needs as well as possible. Thus arises a perennial problem in pedagogical and administrative technique: Should “problem children” be segregated in separate classes and separate schools where groups of unadjusted and delinquent boys are massed together, or should they be brought as much as possible into contact with normal children in the regular schools? According to General Strain Theory, in cases where the problems of personality are serious enough and classroom environment becomes the source of frustration for children, children should be treated for their special requirements in groups established according to their needs. If these individuals are to be taught separately they need programs and teachers that are adapted to their peculiar needs.
According to the Behavioral Theory, juvenile delinquency preventive programs should be based on positive and negative reinforcements. Some of the examples of preventive programs with the use of negative reinforcements are confinement, boot camps and waiver. Although not as restrictive as confinement in a secure facility, boot camps are known for their rigid militaristic style. Juvenile participants are commonly organized into platoons and required to wear uniforms and to participate in daily regimens of drill exercises and physical training. Daily routines may extend from 5:30 or 6:00 A.M. to lights out at 9:00 or 10:00 P.M (Fagan, Zimring, 2001, p. 88). This program is focused upon changing attitudes and behavior through discipline.
Another popular program of achieving delinquency prevention or reduction has been waiver of juvenile offenders to adult court. By waiving juveniles to adult court, there is an increased chance that they will come into contact with adult felony offenders and, consequently, after this contact the juvenile should learn to be better.
Unlike boot camps and waiver, mentor programs involve mostly positive reinforcements in changing juvenile behavior. Most programs involve volunteer staff who see themselves as giving something to or sharing something with the youths who are being mentored (Colvin, Cullen, Vander Ven, 2002, p. 20) Mentor programs are less costly than other approaches to delinquency prevention because often the mentors are volunteers who may or may not receive reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses related to mentoring activities. As a juvenile justice strategy, mentoring is an opportunity to provide support where it is missing and to supplement it when it is weak.
In conclusion, the contributing factors that make a child delinquent are numerous and varied; they are often complexly interwoven in a single case. One single theory cannot explain the complex of conditions and circumstances producing delinquency. Similarly, application of one single preventive program will not significantly reduce juvenile delinquency. Therefore, juvenile delinquency preventive programs should be based upon several theoretical approaches and developed for every particular case of juvenile delinquency.
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Mentally Ill Juvenile Sentenced To 50 Years In Prison

July 13th, 2009 at 07:06pm Under Juvenile Law

A court in Johnson County, Kansas sentenced a mentally ill juvenile to life in prison with no chance of parole for 50 years. Andrew Ellman was convicted of murdering his mental health worker, Terri Zenner.
The defendant was 17 years old when he killed the victim. Because he was a juvenile at the time of the incident he was not eligible for the death penalty.
His victim, Teri Zenner, was 26 years old and recently married when he killed her. She worked for Johnson County Mental Health trying to help Andrew Ellmaker learn skills and find a job. She stopped by Ellmaker’s Overland Park home on August 17, 2004, for a routine home visit.
She never left alive. Andrew Ellmaker stabbed her to death and cut her with a chainsaw. He also stabbed his mother when she tried to intervene.
Sue Ellmaker, the defendant’s mother, survived the ordeal. She pleaded for mercy at the sentencing because of her son’s mental illness. She said that her son struggled early with mental illness. By the time he became an adolescent, his mental disorders overwhelmed him. He walked the hallways of his high school alone and wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his eyes. She placed her son in institutions until her insurance benefits ran out and then had to let him live at home.
The victim’s husband, Matt Zenner, cared nothing for this defense.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about mental illness,” he said at the sentencing hearing. “Stand up and be a man. You sit there and stare at the floor…. It’s beyond my comprehension that you were able to do this.”
As the husband of the victim, Matt Zenner is entitled to his feelings of loss, anger and bereavement. The family of Terri Zenner deserves all our compassion.
However, as a society we must overcome our prejudice that mental illness is both incomprehensible and inexcusable. Otherwise, we could face even more tragedies like Teri Zenner’s.
More than seventy percent of youth in the juvenile justice system suffer from at least one mental health disorder, according to the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. For girls, the number is even higher. Eighty percent of girls in juvenile justice suffer mental illness. For all offenders, disruptive disorders are the most common, followed by substance use disorders, anxiety disorders and mood disorders.
Over sixty percent of youths in juvenile justice meet criteria for three or more disorders. Twenty five percent find their lives seriously impaired by mental illness.
For many of their families, juvenile justice provides their first and only access to mental health services. Sue Ellmaker testified that she kept her son in institutions “until her insurance benefits ran out.” Then he returned to the community, where he posed a deadly danger to the community.
Juvenile justice is not set up for mental health services. The aims and services of juvenile justice differ from the needs of the mentally ill youths who enter the system.
Families raising a child with mental illness feel frustrated, overwhelmed and exhausted. In my law practice, we help these families by coordinating special education, juvenile justice and mental health services.
Andrew Ellmaker deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. The rest of us, though, must work even harder to help families raising children with special needs. It’s the only way to prevent future tragedies from happening.

Juvenile Records not Always Private Records

July 13th, 2009 at 01:06pm Under Juvenile Law

Many people believe that juvenile offenses are not serious and that they are extinguished or sealed when a juvenile reaches the age of 18.  Unfortunately, that is not correct.  A juvenile record can be long lasting and it can have a significant impact on a juvenile’s ability to find employment or rent apartments as an adult.

 Certification as an Adult. 

Some juvenile records are certified to adult court automatically by operation of law.  For example, any first degree murder conviction is certified to adult court.

Certification to adult court may also occur based on a motion from the prosecution.  Juveniles over the age of 13 can be certified into adult court when the prosecutor files a motion for adult certification in a felony case.  That is often the case in matters involving criminal sexual conduct, assault or murder.  Having experienced counsel to combat that certification can mean the difference between an indefinite criminal record and a record that is sealed to the public or only partially accessible.

A DWI case is also treated as an adult criminal offense if the juvenile is age 16 or 17 and charged with another misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor traffic violation simultaneously.

Traffic offenses for juveniles ages 16 or 17 are also under adult court jurisdiction  pursuant to Minnesota Statutes Sec. 2560B.163, Subd. 1.

Predator/Sex Offenses Require Public Registration

Any court order requiring registration of a juvenile ages 16 or 17 as a sexual offender is a public record.  If the juvenile is considered a level 3 sexual offender, the registration record is also public. So too is a juvenile order certifying a juvenile as an adult and convicted of a requisite felony. 

Public Hearings in Juvenile Court

Although juvenile hearings are often private, some proceedings are open to the public.  Specifically, proceedings are open to the public for any 16 or 17 year old charged with a felony offense or in any case where the court has extended juvenile jurisdiction (EJJ).  Motions may be filed by parties or on the court’s own motion for some proceedings to remain private.  Having experienced counsel to shield a juvenile charged with a felony from public scrutiny can be an important consideration in any juvenile case.

Public Records in Juvenile Court

Juvenile records may become public records if a juvenile is 16 years or older and charged with an offense that would be a felony if committed by an adult.  This is codified under Minnesota Statutes Sec.  260B.171.  Interestingly enough, parents are often deceived when felony charges are reduced or dismissed.  If the original charge would have been a felony for an adult, any plea to a reduced charge or a dismissal would remain a public record.

Juvenile Records Accessible to Agencies  and Law Enforcement

Often parents believe that a juvenile record will not affect their children once they reach adulthood.  However, under Minnesota Statutes Sec. 260B.171 and Minn. Stat. Sec. 245A there are exceptions even for misdemeanors.  A court may always unseal a juvenile record and juvenile records are automatically accessible to licensing agencies such as the Department of Human Services.  A juvenile record may preclude an adult from working in the health care field, in a daycare, educational field, foster care or from possessing a firearm.  Juvenile records are also always accessible to law enforcement agencies.

School Notification

There are many juvenile offenses that require law enforcement to notify that juvenile’s school officials.  School notification must occur when a juvenile is charged (not convicted) of a controlled substance crime including possession, possession with intent to sell or possession of substances with the intent to manufacture methamphetamines, possession of a small amount of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia or possession, consumption or purchase of alcohol.

School notification must also occur if the offense is one where protection of a victim is necessary. That may occur where assault, criminal sexual conduct, terroristic threats, harassment or similar offenses are charged.

The Treatment of Juvenile Delinquents

July 13th, 2009 at 01:06am Under Juvenile Law

The passage from the old to the new ; from the regime of vengeance and deterrence, operating through the base passion of fear, to that of social protection and individual reformation, naturally finds its most complete expression in the treatment of juvenile delinquents. We say ” naturally ” because this innovation, which is of distinctly modern growth and has leaped into almost universal favor, bears all the earmarks of the scientific thought that is gradually dominating the age and that this work endeavors to expound. With this, therefore, we conclude our examination of the crime problem.
The juvenile laws are, in reality, an extension of the probation principle, first embodied in the laws of Massachusetts. Judgement is suspended, and the offender, with the co-operation of the probation officer and other agencies at the command of the juvenile court, is given a chance to reform. Separate trials for children were instituted first in Massachusetts and New York, but Illinois, by a law that went into effect June I, 1899, was the first state to install the juvenile court as we have it today.
In the agitation for this reform women’s organizations have played a most conspicuous part, and the entire movement doubtless should be regarded as part of that greater social revolt which is protesting against the immolation of child life on the altar of commercial greed ; which, keenly alive to the fatal effects of the slum environment, is establishing city playgrounds throughout the country, and is manifesting itself in many other directions, such as the increasing attention paid to the treatment of defective children, the insistence that children need recreation and substantial food more than they need discipline and book learning, and so forth. In fact we shall find that the leading administrators of the juvenile court laws lay far greater stress on the spirit in which they are administered than on the actual text. The entire movement, which, we repeat, has spread with extraordinary rapidity, is the outcome of a revolt of the spirit ; of the strictly modern, scientific conception that it is absurd to punish offences that are the inevitable effects of well ascertained causes.
Within ten years thirty states passed laws providing for ‘the application of the probation principle to juvenile delinquents’.
No one can speak with greater authority on this subject than does Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of the Juvenile Court of Denver, Colo. Incidentally it may be remarked that a most suggestive tribute to the high regard in which the juvenile laws, and Judge Lindsey’s administration of them, are held was furnished by those who are, of all others, the most competent critics. Despite Judge Lindsey’s protest the Denver boys worked as a unit for his re-election, which upset all the prophecies of the political wiseacres who had declared his success impossible.