Juvenile Law Commons^™

Give Peace A Chance: A Guide To Mediating Child Welfare Cases, Jennifer Baum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Would you like to speed up your cases, achieve more satisfying results for your clients, and cut back on needlessly polarizing motion practice? Since its introduction in the 1980s, child welfare mediation has helped attorneys do just that by facilitating resolutions in child protective disputes more quickly, less contentiously, and with more acceptance from stakeholders than its courtroom alternative, adversarial litigation.

If you've handled dependency cases for any length of time, you are already familiar with the crushing caseloads, emotional volatility, and high-stakes decision-making that are the hallmarks of child welfare litigation. In a growing number of jurisdictions, attorneys …

Factors In Juvenile Court Dispositions: Case Study Of A Rural Juvenile Court, Kevin Lee Kirk

Online Theses and Dissertations

The primary question of importance in this current study is what factors affect judges' dispositional rulings in a small rural Central Kentucky county. In order to evaluate these factors, this study involved a two stage process. The quantitative data were gathered from 120 Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) files dating back to 1999 that were processed through the study site small county court. The qualitative data were gathered through a series of structured interviews with court personnel. This current study provides descriptive statistics of the study cases that have been adjudicated delinquent with respect to their legal and extralegal characteristics, …

No Harm, No Foul? Why Harmless Error Analysis Should Not Be Used To Review Wrongful Denials Of Counsel To Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

The application of a harmless error standard by appellate courts reviewing erroneous denials of counsel in child protective cases undermines a critical procedural right that safeguards the interests of parents and children. Case law reveals that trial courts, on numerous occasions, improperly reject valid requests for counsel, forcing parents to navigate the child welfare system without an advocate. Appellate courts excuse these violations by speculating that the denials caused no significant harm to the parents, which is a conclusion that a court can never reach with any certainty. The only appropriate remedy for this significant problem is a bright-line rule …

An Analysis Of The History And Hardship Experienced By Girls In The Las Vegas Juvenile Justice System, Ana Zuniga

McNair Poster Presentations

Previous research has defined several factors as predictors to juvenile delinquency. Characteristics among the youth involved in criminal behavior include various home placements, running away, mental health problems, physical and sexual abuse, delinquency history, and family members with a delinquent background. These factors were analyzed in the current to observe whether the predictors were relevant to girls detained in the Las Vgeas juvenile justice system. While observing the data in this study, it appeared that predictors described in previous research were in fact present among this population. However, Further research should take an in depth look at these factors in …

Preventing The Unnecessary Entry Of Children Into Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

A young mother of three endures abuse at the hands of the children's father. Her children repeatedly witness the violence in their home and describe it to a school teacher, who in turn places a call to Child Protective Services (CPS). A CPS investigator arrives at the home the next morning with a plethora of questions for the mother and her children. Have the children been hit? Did they observe the beatings? What steps has their mother taken to protect them? An adversarial conversation ensues. Unsatisfactory answers may lead to tragic consequences-the removal of the children from their home.

Section 2259 Restitution Claims And Child Pornography Possession, Dina Mcleod

Michigan Law Review

In 2009, a child pornography victim brought a criminal restitution claim against a defendant who possessed images of her abuse. The statutory provision authorizing restitution, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, had never before been used to bring a claim against a defendant who had only possessed, rather than produced or distributed, child pornography ("child pornography possession defendants"). The federal courts have not developed a consistent approach to resolving Section 2259 claims involving such defendants. This Note argues that two conceptions of traditional proximate cause doctrine can provide a framework for analyzing such claims. It examines Section 2259 claims using both a …

Prosecutorial Discretion And The Neglect Of Juvenile Shielding Statutes, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

When legislatures enact statutes, furtherance of legislative intent depends on the behavior of actors in the executive and judicial branches of government. In the criminal justice system, prosecutors may frustrate legislative intent when they exercise prosecutorial discretion. This Article examines an instance in which prosecutors’ choices work to the detriment of children.

This Article reviews the failure of juvenile shielding statutes to take hold in the prosecution of cases involving child witnesses because of prosecutors’ discretionary decisions not to use these statutes. The Article investigates prosecutors’ pragmatic and doctrinal justifications for not utilizing juvenile shielding statutes and concludes that the …

Integrating Education Advocacy Into Child Welfare Practice: Working Models, Jennifer N. Rosen Valverde, Cara Chambers, Megan Blamble Dho, Regina Schaefer

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Incarceration And The Pains Of Imprisonment, Jeffrey Fagan, Aaron Kupchik

Faculty Scholarship

After legislatures criminalized a major portion of juvenile delinquency in the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of incarcerated youth began serving their sentences in adult correctional facilities. To understand the ramifications of this practice, prior research studies compared the correctional experiences of youth in juvenile and adult facilities. Yet this research often minimized the pains of imprisonment for youth in juvenile facilities, based on the contrast to adult facilities and the toxic conditions of confinement within them. In this Article, we contribute to this literature by analyzing data from interviews with 188 young men incarcerated in juvenile and adult facilities …

Moral Disengagement Among Serious Juvenile Offenders: A Longitudinal Study Of The Relations Between Morally Disengaged Attitudes And Offending, Jeffrey Fagan, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Elizabeth Cauffman, Alex R. Piquero

Faculty Scholarship

The present study investigates the relation between moral disengagement – one’s willingness to conditionally endorse transgressive behavior – and ongoing offending in a sample of adolescent male felony offenders (N=1,169). In addition, the study attempts to rule out callous-unemotional traits as a third variable responsible for observed associations between moral disengagement and offending. A bivariate latent change score analysis suggests that reduction in moral disengagement helps to speed decline in self-reported antisocial behavior, even after adjusting for the potential confound of callous-unemotional traits. Declines in moral disengagement are also associated with declining likelihood of offending, based on official records. Given …

Called "Out" At Home: The One Strike Eviction Policy And Juvenile Court, Wendy J. Kaplan, David Rossman

Faculty Scholarship

One of the harshest collateral consequences of a juvenile delinquency case is the prospect of eviction from public housing. Under the federal government’s One Strike policy, public housing authorities are encouraged to evict families for any criminal act by their children, no matter how trivial. This politically popular policy creates more social ills than it cures. There is no evidence that it reduces crime in public housing, but there is abundant evidence that it makes families homeless, puts children out on the street, leads police departments to breach laws concerning confidentiality of juvenile proceedings, and creates conflicts of interest between …

Death Is Not So Different After All: Graham V. Florida And The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Mary E. Berkheiser

Scholarly Works

In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court declared that life sentences without the possibility of parole for non-homicides are off limits for all juveniles. Following its lead in Roper v. Simmons, the landmark decision in which the Court abolished the juvenile death penalty, the Court expanded on its Eighth Amendment juvenile jurisprudence by ruling that locking up juveniles for life based on crimes other than homicides is cruel and unusual and, therefore, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. With that ruling, the Court erected a categorical bar to incarcerating forever those not yet adults at the time …

Gangs And Gang Activity In America: A Prevention Report, Portland State University. Criminology And Criminal Justice Senior Capstone

Criminology and Criminal Justice Senior Capstone Project

This report covers information on gangs, gang activity, and gang prevention. The report reveals information such as the history of gangs in the U.S., the definition of “gang,” data on prevalence, persons affected by gang activity, demographics of gangs and their members, criminal activity committed by gangs, gang hierarchical structure, prevention strategies, and effectiveness of gang prevention programs.

The Challenge Of Developing Effective Public Policy On The Use Of Social Media By Youth, John Palfrey

Federal Communications Law Journal

Symposium: Essays from Time Warner Cable's Research Program on Digital Communications.

Combating Cyberbullying: Emphasizing Education Over Criminalization, Jessica P. Meredith

Federal Communications Law Journal

The advent of new technologies such as social media websites like MySpace and Facebook have increased the methods through which bullying takes form and causes harm to children and teenagers. As the public has become more aware of the dangers of this new form of bullying, cyberbullying, legislators have responded by proposing legislation to criminalize this type of behavior with varying degrees of success. This Note explains the problem of cyberbullying and evaluates state and federal legislative efforts to combat the issue through criminalization, then argues that prevention through education will be the most effective solution. Unlike criminalization, educational initiatives …

A Search For The Truth Or Trial By Ordeal: When Prosecutors Cross-Examine Adolescents How Should Courts Respond, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

It is an axiom of the law that cross-examination is, in John Henry Wigmore's words, the "greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth." In part because of its perceived utility in getting to the truth of a matter, courts are generally reluctant, despite broad authority to do so, to step in and to govern the conduct of cross-examination. But is cross-examination invariably calculated to ascertain the truth? While most lawyers are familiar with Wigmore's famous quotation, few are familiar with the caveat that shortly follows it: "A lawyer can do anything with cross-examination.. . . He may, …

A Modest Appeal For Decent Respect, Jessica Olive, David C. Gray

Faculty Scholarship

In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits imposing a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release for nonhomicide crimes if the perpetrator was under the age of eighteen at the time of his offense. In so holding, Justice Kennedy cited foreign and international law to confirm the Court’s independent judgment. In his dissent, Justice Thomas recited now-familiar objections to the Court’s reliance on these sources. Those objections are grounded in his originalist jurisprudence. In this short invited essay, which expands on prior work, we argue that Justice Thomas should abandon these …

Sextual Healing: Solving The Teen To Teen Sexting Problem In Virginia, Samuel T. Bernier

Law Student Publications

This comment analyzes how teen-to-teen sexting is presently addressed under the Code of Virginia. It also addresses the statutes under which Janie and her friends may be convicted for their various indiscretions as well as some of the long term consequences of those convictions. Additionally, it addresses the recent Virginia State Crime Commissions report on teen-to-teen sexting.

Towards A New Lens Of Analysis: The History And Future Of Religioius Exemptions To Child Neglect Statutes, Gregory Engle

Law Student Publications

In order to analyze the religious exemptions, this paper will begin with their history. Part II looks at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA) the statute that precipitated their spread, as well as the justifications that it was bolstered upon: Free Exercise of religion and parental rights. The Equal Protection critique follows as Part III, followed by Part IV that discusses the traditional critique, grounded in the Establishment Clause. In Part V, the article will finish with an explanation of why the Equal Protection critique is a much stronger criticism.

Unfettered Discretion: Criminal Orders Of Protection And Their Impact On Parent Defendants, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

The last two decades have witnessed an astonishing increase in the use of the criminal justice system to police neglectful parents. Recasting traditional allegations of neglect as criminal charges of endangering the welfare of a child, prosecutors and the police have involved criminal courts in the regulation of aspects of the parent child relationship that were once the sole province of family courts. This Article explores the legal implications of vesting judges in these cases with the unfettered discretion to issue protective orders that criminalize contact between a parent and her child. I argue that procedures for issuing protective orders …