ambivalent comment

Well, I was meaning to comment on this before but now that you've called me out... I've been representing a few juveniles in my clinic and it's a lot like what you describe. One of my kids was brought into the system for the very first time for nothing more than a schoolyard fight where no one even suffered more than a bruise. I can't help thinking when I see stuff like this that it's a real failure on the part of the school to allow kids to get a criminal record for something that has always been part of growing up. But the law is in these schools every day -- many of them have full-time police officers walking the halls and patrolling the grounds every day so that if anyone gets into trouble it's not just school trouble, it's criminal trouble (so long as they can file it under some criminal law, e.g. assault). This is awful b/c then these kids get records, plus many spend time in juve and come out ten times worse than they went in. It's painfully sad. I can't help thinking that crap like this doesn't happen outside of cities (meaning in smaller towns). I mean, is this universal, or is it just a city thing where we are criminalizing childhood? It sure as hell wasn't this way when and where I was in school, but maybe it's changed everywhere... Plus, talking to these kids about their options is another painful experience. It's one thing to tell an adult client “you can do X or Y” in this situation. The choice is theirs and since they are adults you have to assume they are making rational decisions. Not so w/a 14-year-old who may not even have the ability to think beyond what happens tomorrow, let alone five years from now. How does someone like that really assess the ramifications of a plea offer? All he wants is to get home out and of jail; he'll do *anything* to make that happen. And yet, as attorneys we're supposed to do what our clients say, right? But I'm pretty much w/womanofthelaw -- as hard as it is working with kids, I really like it. You can't always do much for them, but in those cases where you can make a difference, that difference can have much more lasting consequences on their lives b/c they are so young. That's the theory, anyway. Plus, I much prefer the attitude of the juvenile system which is, theoretically, “we need to do what's best for this child” (as opposed to the attitude for adults, which is basically “lock the bastards up!”). Your arguments about rehabilitation and the potential improvement of your client can go a lot farther in juvenile court.