Juvenile justice reformers prepare proposal

The Missouri Juvenile Justice Task Force adjourned last Friday after spending six months exploring ways to keep Missouri children under 18 years of age out of adult jail and prison populations.

The task force plans on soon releasing a report that outlines recommendations on the issue provided by individuals and organizations. By unanimous vote, the task force moved to add its own recommendation to the report to ask for the legislative authority required to re-commission it and continue meeting in the future.

Task force member Tracy McClard said the group studied three key goals - raise the default age of adult prosecution from 17 to 18; raise the eligible age for certification from 12 to 16; and remove as many kids under 18 as possible as quickly as possible from the adult jail population before their trials.

Missouri is one of only seven states left that automatically prosecutes a 17-year-old as an adult, said McClard, who is the founder of Families and Friends Organizing for Reform of Juvenile Justice Missouri.

Certification is the process by which a court determines if a child should be tried as an adult.

Sixteen seems to be the age which has gotten the most agreement in the task force, Rep. Ron Hicks, R-St. Peters, said.

"There's still a lot to be done," Hicks said. "There's no way in six months that we were going to fix the problems that this state has with juvenile corrections, there's no way. That's why I would like to see it (the task force) continue on, and being the vice chairman of the committee, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it does continue to go on, whether I'm vice chairman or not."

Some of the challenges in achieving the task force goals include rundown or poorly managed juvenile justice facilities, lack of funding for facilities and programs, and the lack of a statewide data collection and sharing system for all of the juvenile facilities - county and state-run, Hicks said.

"The hardest thing for this committee to do, so far, has been getting the information we need from local officials," he said, referring to sheriffs departments, police departments and jails.

McClard has been trying for four years to get an accurate count of how many children are in the justice system, and her results are still not conclusive.

Since 17 year olds are presently counted as adults, they are not included the system's counts of kids, she said.

Hicks has also faced difficulty in gathering data, even with the access granted a legislative official.

"I guess I can subpoena them, they'd have to (give data) then, but why do we have to do something like that?" Hicks said.

Hicks was drawn into juvenile justice reform, he said because "I'm one of those kids that had a rough upbringing, and didn't have mom and dad at home all the time. I can relate."

The lawmaker said he spent some time in the juvenile justice system as a boy after the police evicted him and his siblings from occupying their vacant family home.

"I remember how scared I was when they took me away from my two brothers and my sister," he said. "Yet we were family, they took us into this place, and then took us apart, so I know what that's like."

Hicks said he did not want to get involved in juvenile justice issues until Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City, came to him with a piece of legislation called Jonathan's Law and introduced him to McClard.

"The passion was there; they opened the cage," Hicks said.

When Jonathan's Law came across Hicks's desk in his first year in office, it became his priority.

Jonathan's Law gave the Division of Youth Services an additional six months to determine whether kids who committed a crime before their 17th birthday belonged in a dual jurisdiction program, but did not raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction, McClard said.

The dual jurisdiction program is only for children who are certified as an adult, and has a success rate of 83 percent non-recidivism, she said.

The rigorous program involves getting the services kids would be missing in adult jail, including intensive individual and family counseling, "victim empathy" sessions to understand the consequences of their actions and make some amends, education and drug rehab, she said.

"What is not working is treating these kids as adults, because they come back home, and they recidivate, because they've learned how to fight," McClard said. "They've learned how to survive in this massive, frightening environment where they have to learn to protect themselves.

"They come out with serious mental health issues. You can't have a safe community if we're treating our kids like this, and the majority of them are coming back home with all of these issues."

McClard also said kids under 18 tried as adults will carry the "collateral consequences" of any felony convictions, including the inability to finish school or get a job.

"Don't get me wrong. There are so many areas in this state that need fixing. This is just one that I found a passion for, and that's why I'm trying to tackle it myself, just like (McClard)," Hicks said.

McClard and Hicks said that even though some kids break the law and need to face consequences for their actions, that does not merit the treatment they receive from being placed in the adult population.

Jonathan's Law is named after one of McClard's sons, who took his own life in a cell after being sentenced to serve 30 years in an adult facility. Jonathan plead guilty as an adult at 16 to shooting another teenager, who survived.

"You hold them accountable, but not like that, not in the adult system," McClard said.