Teen Trouble: Juveniles and the Law
There’s a period in one’s young life when politeness, charm, and winning ways are definitely not part of the picture. Take your 17-year-old son, Irwin, who believes it’s good to be bad. He wears mirror shades all hours of the day and night, his biceps are voluptuously inked with screaming skulls, and he spends endless hours in his room cranking obscure Norwegian death metal bands. Most summer nights, reports your daughter, a well-behaved honors student at Manhattan’s elite Horace Mann High School, Irwin and his depraved-looking friends can be found drinking PBRs in Williamsburg’s McCarren Park, getting higher than Air Jamaica, and howling at the moon.
“It’s just a stage he’s going through,” you tell your anxious wife good-naturedly.
But then you get a 3AM call from the police, officially informing you that Irwin and his band mates were busted for disorderly conduct outside their favorite pizzeria. Instead of obeying the policeman’s orders to raise his hands above his head, your gland-filled son instead broke the antenna off the police cruiser, and whip-lashed the face of the arresting officer. Fleeing the scene on a hijacked skateboard, the young fugitive was finally apprehended after a lengthy chase through Williamsburg’s North Side, by the canine unit.
What Is It?
A juvenile crime can include a wide variety of crimes normally committed by adults. These might include D.U.I, marijuana possession, robbery, assault-with-a-deadly-weapon, rape, and not as infrequently as you might think, murder. Individuals under the age of 18 who commit these crimes are punishable by law, but unlike the adult criminal justice system, more flexibility is accorded juveniles.
Generally, the age range of juvenile crime is between the ages of 10 and 18. The upper age of eligibility may be even younger than 18, or extended to the age of 20, depending on each state’s juvenile criminal justice system. In some states, a sentence obtained from a juvenile court cannot extend beyond the individual’s 18th birthday. Alternatively, a few states, including California and Connecticut, allow 14, 15, 16, and 17-year-olds to be tried as adults.
Juvenile attorneys believe children are children, and the adult criminal justice system does not provide the most appropriate means to deal with their criminal misbehavior. Children don’t have the maturity to function without adult guidance, and a skilled juvenile criminal lawyer will emphasize this fundamental reality. Society doesn’t allow children to vote, smoke, drink, or serve as police officers. In most cases, children are unable to marry. Nor does society consider children to be accountable as adults, and their actions should be treated accordingly.
Who Needs It?
For any child arrested, transported to the police station, and booked – it’s highly advisable to enlist the services of an experiences juvenile attorney a.s.a.p. Since juvenile court is different from the adult criminal justice system, you want an attorney who fully understands those differences. As one judge once put it, “Criminal defense attorneys unfamiliar with Juvenile Court procedure tend to be the worst at unwittingly hurting their clients’ positions.”
Benefits
If the teenager’s crime is not serious, a juvenile lawyer can often work out an agreement that might require the child to pay a fine, attend a class, or do similar work. By completing the agreement, the child will avoid going before a judge and getting a record of a judicial adjudication that could hurt him or her down the road. Depending on state procedures and youth services, a lawyer can steer a case towards non-judicial closure in a number of different ways.
If a non-judicial resolution cannot be reached, then the case will be set for arraignment before a juvenile court judge. At arraignment, the judge will inform the minor of her rights. The judge will then ask the young defendant to admit or deny the truth of the allegations in the petition. If your attorney counsels your child to admit the charge, the judge will adjudicate that the child is within the jurisdiction of the court. The judge will normally proceed to sentencing.
Your attorney can argue for some mix of community service, fines, and restitution. Occasionally, a short stay in detention is imposed, for less than 30 days. Other sanctions may be imposed, such as taking anger-management classes or entering drug and alcohol counseling programs.
At every point during these proceedings, the wise juvenile crimes attorney will emphasize that winning means doing what is best for the child, the community, and the victims. The three are all interrelated, and the teenage defendant is best served when your attorney works with juvenile prosecutors and judges towards this end.
Risks
Most states’ juvenile criminal justice systems operate under the belief that youth are fundamentally different than adults, in terms of psychological development, their level of responsibility, as well as their potential for rehabilitation. Juvenile judges, at the bequest of excellent juvenile lawyers, have been more concerned with administering individualized justice on the child’s behalf than with jumping through procedural hoops intended to guarantee due process. Many states, like Missouri, see successful reintegration of youth into society as the primary goal of the juvenile criminal justice system – without compromising public safety. Few would consider all 16- or 17-year-olds mature.
However, recent attitudinal changes have hardened the juvenile criminal justice system’s approach. As juvenile offense rates skyrocketed in the 1990s, many legislatures responded with a “get tough” approach. In the mid-1990s Utah’s legislature passed the “Serious Youth Offender Act,” which mandated that certain teenage offenders could be transferred to the criminal justice system to be tried as adults. This Act abandoned any attempt at juvenile court rehabilitation of certain categories of offenders – including some first-time offenders.
Connecticut and California have followed Utah’s example. Both states will treat 16- and 17-year-olds as adults if judges see fit. In the most serious crimes, the two states even treat 14- and 15-year-olds as the adults that few psychiatrists believe they are.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the legal expertise and advice of your attorney. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about litigation with an appropriate legal expert.