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 the two teen boys who escaped from the Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Facility in San Antonio on Feb. 24.
Despite the challenges of acknowledging juveniles’ wrongdoing without making a beeline toward vengeance, rehabilitating them benefits adults and society at least as much as it serves the needs of the offenders. The adolescents who escaped represent children in the juvenile justice system in every city and state, reflecting 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 abandoned what decades of planning deemed sound.
As Lawnacki observed, understanding people’s stories makes it harder to condemn them. When 30 other juveniles stand in 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 teens like the ones who made news this week. I wonder whether a judge knew that one of my clients’ fathers was high every night. Did another judge consider that the curfew he imposed without reading a kid’s file would ensure doomed homework in the chaos of that so-called home?
What about the logic of forcing a teen to visit a college as a consequence for doing the same thing that had earned a community service sanction the week before? Now, college is punitive drudgery. Nice going, judge.
How about the probation officer who denied one of my teens a visit with me because I challenged her? She jerked that kid away from the first place he got his homework done, prepared for college, and studied for the SAT.
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.
Judge Ben Lindsey of Denver, who revolutionized juvenile justice a century ago, counseled adolescents rather than punishing them. Another early 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.”
Where is that foresight at present? Today’s juvenile courts have fewer judges like Mack and Lindsey and more who are unprepared for the awesome responsibility of directing a life at a crossroads.
The ideals of Mack and 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 not fair to deny vulnerable teens the protection they need and deserve.
However misguided the two escapees may appear, they have a story. That story will determine how best to help them and, yes, to improve 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. They are the real heroes of juvenile court. By rehabilitating teenagers like the recent escapees, cultivating optimism, and showing them a purpose, those pioneering judges honored parental compassion over kneejerk vengeance.
Who, Mary-Lou Lawnacki might ask, can’t love those stories?
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