A woman who works with juveniles in that court system reported this week that the state’s first case of a 16-year-old to be heard in juvenile — not adult — court took place in New Haven under a new law.
“It was some sort of domestic violence case,” explained Chris Rapillo (pictured), who works with juvenile offenders through the state’s public defender’s office.
She spent Monday, Jan. 4, driving around the state looking for such a case. That was the first day the law took effect treating 16-year-olds as juveniles rather than adults in the criminal justice system.
“Those are the kind of cases where in juvenile court that family — not just the kid, but the family — is going to be able to get services to fix whatever it was that led to that child being arrested,” she said. “And it really wouldn’t have been available in adult court. There would have been services, maybe, for the offender, but nothing that would have gotten at the family issues.”
Rapillo was one of dozens of parents and youth advocates — including a handful of legislators — who filled the community room at Gateway Community College on Sargent Drive for the annual legislative breakfast sponsored by the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance. The group helped push through a law in 2007 called Raise the Age.
The law was supposed to move both 16- and 17-year-olds to juvenile jurisdiction on Jan. 1, 2010, rather than treat them as adults, which only two other states do. Because of the state budget crisis, the 17-year-olds won’t be included until July, 2012.
(Click here for a story about how one area police chief views the new law’s effects.)
Presenters from the Alliance said their priorities this year are to make the law more effective and to promote fairness. “We are going to continue to work to keep kids out of the adult criminal justice system, to keep kids who have not committed crimes out of the system, to keep kids in school, and then on fairness, make sure that a young person’s race or ethnicity doesn’t affect how that young person is treated,” said Lara Herskovitch, senior policy analyst.
Many offenses — such as truancy and running away — are illegal for minors but are not crimes. Many of these young people are now served through a program called Families With Service Needs, which has significantly reduced the number of youth in the criminal justice system, and saved money. That’s basically how advocates were able to succeed in getting at least the 16-year-olds incorporated into the juvenile system, because in other ways being in that system costs more money than being treated as an adult.
“You have to spend some money to save money,” was the way Abby Anderson (pictured) put it. She’s executive director of the CTJJA. She elaborated on the “fairness” piece of her group’s priorities. She said a study of 15 points of contact between youth and the criminal justice system showed that in seven of them there was “disproportionate minority contact,” or DMC.That means black and Latino youth were in the system in greater proportion than their numbers in the general population.
Anderson said three myths surrounding DMC are that minority youth commit more crimes than whites, that poverty is to blame, and that more minority youth live in cities, which have higher crime rates than rural or suburban areas. Anderson said studies in Connecticut have shown that rural and suburban districts have even more disproportionate minority contact than cities.
An African-American woman from Hartford said her son — an excellent student and athlete — got caught up in the system simply for being a few seconds late getting into his classroom one day in high school, because there was “zero tolerance” for lateness. She said she was traumatized by it, and her son — now 21 — “is still angry at the world and feels a sense of injustice.”
Melinda Tuhus Photo
Hamden resident Neva Caldwell (pictured) asked if kids are having a disagreement in school, “Why not put them in a room and let them work it out?” Anderson said what might seem like a commonsense approach has been stymied by cutbacks of support staff in schools.
Ruth Henderson (pictured), piped up from the back of the room: “We have to close the gap between parents and teachers and stop blaming each other.” She said she volunteers at Wexler Grant School five days a week and has been able to help kids who need some extra support.
New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker (pictured), who championed the Raise the Age legislation until it passed, picked up on that theme. She urged her listeners to dream big. “We’ve got to stop blaming, and support each other. We set the barriers ourselves. We have to start dreaming and start to see…we need passion. We can make things better because we already have.”