Juvenile Injustice: The Peter Montenegro Case

San Jose is only hours from Chicago by air but seemingly light-years away from Chicago’s 1899 juvenile court, the first in the nation.

15-year-old Peter Montenegro’s future, and that of kids like him, hinges on a choice: punishing them as adult criminals or rehabilitating them to honor the original caretaking function of the juvenile court.

Police have alleged that Montenegro shot and seriously wounded an ice cream truck driver in Vallejo, California on February 3.

Despite that he was initially housed at Alameda County Juvenile Hall after his arrest, Montenegro will stand trial as an adult on charges of attempted murder and attempted robbery.

In the rush to hold someone responsible for this tragedy, Peter Montenegro would sit at the top of many people’s villain lists.

Few can imagine something more heinous than shooting Amarjit Kaur, an immigrant with limited English, at close range and making off with her entire day’s earnings.

To be sure, these crimes would be just as reprehensible whether the perpetrator was 15 or 50. But even if a court finds Peter Montenegro guilty of these charges, he is also a victim, and so is the public at large.

As I have devoted my career to the law and its history, I know that any criticism of Peter Montenegro and juveniles like him must walk in lockstep with a rebuke of the juvenile justice system that has also failed.

Juvenile courts have a responsibility to protect and rehabilitate children. Early juvenile courts in Chicago and Denver used that anti-incarceration model because it worked then, and it still does.

Louisiana’s juvenile recidivism rate, for example, was five times lower upon implementing alternatives to confinement. Nationally, two-thirds of inmates incarcerated in adult systems are rearrested after their release, and half are imprisoned again.

The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, a public-private partnership, advocates detention only as a last resort. In jurisdictions adopting its protocol, detention center populations declined 52% and juvenile arrests dropped 45%.

Montenegro’s case is a matter of fidelity to the bedrock principles that underpin juvenile courts. Trying him as an adult pays no homage to the founding principles of juvenile court.

My years as a family and divorce mediator, and the training that prepared me for my career, have given me a front-row seat to observe myriad approaches to juvenile justice—the ways that thrive and the ones that fail.

As an intern at Latah County Youth Services while I was a law student at the University of Idaho, I saw the sad faces of kids convinced that their small mistakes would trap them for life within the box of delinquency.

I staffed a homework room for juvenile probationers every afternoon. That volunteer job placed me in the path of many seemingly obnoxious and indifferent teens who appeared not to care about their school work or their future.

The thought would occasionally sprint through my head, “Why don’t we just lock these kids up and throw away the keys?”

But you never quite know who your message is reaching. I worked with Autumn and Jenny, among eight other juveniles whose charges ran the spectrum from truancy to attempted murder.

Whn I left the building on my last day, Autumn and Jenny sought me out to tell me I was the only tutor who had ever bothered to help them. That result didn’t come from taking those girls at face value.

Surely the only underestimated juvenile probationers were not hiding in small-town Idaho. That buried potential likely also resides within Peter Montenegro and thousands of other teens.

We will not know unless we look.