Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/author/judge-steven-teske/page/3/)
Since writing my open letter to Sen. Tom Cotton regarding his opposition to removing the valid court order (VCO) exception of the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act, many have weighed in, trying to sway the senator to change his position. Many have thrown every ounce of research showing that detention of youth for status offenses is harmful, not only to the youth, but to public safety.
I am writing in regards to the concerns you recently expressed on the floor of the Senate about removing the Valid Court Order Exception from the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).
When did making adults mad become a crime?
I asked myself this question shortly after I started judging in juvenile court when confronted with a docket inundated with disruptive students referred from the schools. Most were misdemeanor incidents involving fights, disorderly conduct, disrupting school, graffiti and theft.
The art of leadership, some say, is not in finding followers, but in creating more leaders.
Something I wish I had thought about when I first developed the school-justice partnership.
Champions for change is key to reform. No champions, no change.
No matter the number of evidence-based programs we identify, and the best approaches and models to deliver them, they are meaningless unless someone calls attention to them.
I made the mistake of assuming that all judges would embrace the moral and ethical responsibility of acting to change their own system to keep kids safe and on a trajectory of a positive and healthy future.
“What do you do when you travel to all these places?”
I get this question a lot because judges in the traditional sense don’t travel — they sit.
When I became a judge, it didn’t take long to question why so many kids appeared in my court on minor school offenses. In 1995, the year before police were introduced to schools, there were only 50 referrals to the court. By 2004, it had increased to 1,200 referrals.
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
The captain, a prison warden, uttered these words in the movie classic “Cool Hand Luke” after beating Luke with a whip for his stubborn disobedience.
These words describe the underlying cause of the South Carolina classroom altercation resulting in the firing of a deputy.
We swore to protect the constitutional right to presumption of innocence — yet we parade children into our courtrooms shackled like animals.