The Intensive “Don’t Care” Unit: Christopher Beverage and Nicolas Bismuke as poster children for juvenile justice reform

When Mary-Lou Lawnacki urged, “There is no one you can’t love once you know their story,” she might as well have been writing about Christopher Beverage and Nicolas Bismuke, who escaped from the overcrowded Jack Jones Juvenile Justice Center in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and were recaptured on January 31 and February 1. Christopher and Nicolas represent a decline in the commitment to children everywhere as they reflect the crumbling of once-noble goals.

In 1899, the nation’s first juvenile court recognized that, rather than punishment for adults’ failure to endow them with values, juveniles needed treatment and support. 111 years later, schools and courts have baselessly abandoned the approach that decades of planning deemed sound.

As Lawnacki observed, understanding people’s stories makes it harder to condemn them. When a scraggly-haired kid with ripped jeans stands with 30 other juveniles at what more resembles a cattle auction than a courtroom, the truth doesn’t meet the same eyes as the stereotypes.

As a divorce mediator and teen advocate, I’ve seen lots of kids who missed the holistic treatment that I hope these adolescents will get. The judge for one of the teens I met probably did not know that the kid’s father was high every night. Did the judge consider that the curfew he imposed would ensure doomed homework in the chaos of that so-called home?

What about forcing a kid to visit a college for the same offense that had earned him community service before? Now, college is punitive. Nice going, judge.

My office is often where teens first tell their stories. Probation officers and judges would love them, too, if they knew those stories. But not if those adolescents fear telling them because of the critical response to every other constructive step they’ve attempted. Let’s hope these boys will not think they are a mistake just because they made a mistake.

Judge Ben Lindsey of Denver, who revolutionized juvenile justice a century ago, counseled adolescents rather than punishing them. Another reformer, Judge Julian Mack, sought “what had best be done in children’s interests and in the interest of the state to save them from a downward career.” Why is that foresight generally so absent today?

Instead of a judge unprepared to direct a life at a crossroads, if my teens had appeared before Judge Lindsey, Judge Mack, or, let’s hope, the judge for this week’s detention escape, they would have told their stories. One kid’s dad got in fistfights with the teen’s friends and was too drugged-out later to remember. Another would have described a family with rampant addiction and a father who became enraged when others suggested the young man could succeed.

The ideals of Judge Mack and Judge Lindsey are languishing in the Intensive “Don’t Care” Unit. Appreciating the brokenness of the juvenile court requires not a law degree, but a dictionary. Justice means fairness. It is only fair to ensure vulnerable teens the care they need.

However misguided these teenagers may appear, they have a story. That story will determine how best to help them and, yes, how best to help society, rather than a one-size-fits-all response that deceives the public into thinking the problem has been solved.

Julian Mack and Ben Lindsey were not merely well-intentioned men who tried hard. If their legacy matters, today’s juvenile courts must pay homage to that child-centered philosophy. By rehabilitating teenagers like these young men, cultivating optimism, and showing them a purpose, those pioneering judges -- as the judge in the current case should -- honored parental compassion over knee-jerk vengeance.

Who, Mary-Lou Lawnacki might ask, can’t love those stories?