Miles Ahead, Light-Years Away

By Mediator Matthew House, J.D.

Connecticut’s experiment with opening some juvenile proceedings to public view is the second-best solution to fix a broken system, but that’s no more noteworthy than the second-most-common hair color in China. The gap between best and second-best is almost ridiculously vast, because the far better approach would involve extending to juveniles the same constitutional rights that adults have in criminal proceedings.

Not observing standard evidentiary rules and procedures is fine if the juvenile proceeding is noticeably different from adult court. When juvenile courts began around the turn of the last century, first in Chicago, then in Denver, eventually extending to every jurisdiction in the United States, they were more therapeutic and less punitive. Now, adolescents face judgment in courts that bear every characteristic of adult court except the name.

Perhaps Connecticut’s pilot program in Middletown will allow some who are observing juvenile courts for the first time to see that the system cannot have it both ways. If juveniles undergo a trial that anyone would assume was an adult proceeding except for the age of the defendant, they deserve the same legal protections that an adult would have in his or her arsenal to combat the charges and level the playing field. Without those rights, criminal courts give the most vulnerable defendants even fewer advantages than a fully-grown adult who could thoroughly appreciate the quality of his or her actions.

The alternative is to revert to the caretaking role of the juvenile court, a protective realm in which criminal codes and rules of evidence do not apply to the cardinal goal of rehabilitating the young boy or girl in need of support. The purpose of private juvenile proceedings makes sense if they resemble counseling, which itself is confidential. But it seems a Petri dish for corruption if, already stripped of adult rights, juveniles—in what is nothing short of a criminal trial—lose their last check and balance, the public watchdog.

As a divorce mediator and juvenile advocate, I have learned what works. Three years as a mentor for juvenile offenders at Latah County Youth Services while I was a law student at the University of Idaho reinforced to me that juvenile offenders who have stumbled off the proper path deserve help, not embarrassment.

Connecticut needs to expand its already commendable efforts. First, the state should extend to juveniles any provisions of the state and federal Constitutions that do not already apply to them, even though the United States Supreme Court has not yet done so nationally. After all, state protections can be greater than the federal ones; they just cannot be less.

Second, incarceration must be a last resort and used only to protect the community while the juvenile is being counseled and retrained to reenter society, not to punish the adolescent. Juvenile detention as a general policy costs too much—about $210,000 per year per youth—and has far greater recidivism rates than treatment and rehabilitation.

The private system would not need to step out into the sunshine if it were already working. The Middletown program reflects a flawed system that is even worse in most other states. Connecticut laudably chose to make a questionable process public instead of leaving it private. The far better option is to create a system so trustworthy and fair as not to require piercing the privacy that has veiled what used to be a child-centered, treatment-based institution.

The privacy that shrouds juvenile court for sound reasons should not be used to enable prosecutors and judges—driven by efficiency or ambition instead of justice—to trample juveniles’ rights because they face no scrutiny.