JustChildren is taking a lead role in Virginia and the nation on juvenile justice issues.  We are working with families and other caregivers of children who are involved in the juvenile justice system.  This work is closely linked to our education advocacy: when kids are out of school, they are more likely to get into trouble; when they return from prisons, detention or other settings, it is critical that they successfully transition back into a stable and appropriate educational placement. (Pictured above is the team that helped a young client stay in a vocational training program rather than be transferred to an adult prison, from left, McGuire Woods attorneys Tim Heaphy and Tennille Checkovich, JustChildren's Abigail Turner, our client's mother and Matt Quatara of McGuireWoods on the morning of our client's hearing in Circuit Court.)

Re-Entry

The Commonwealth pays more than $100,000 a year to incarcerate a child in Virginia’s juvenile prisons.  During their confinement, young people receive education, counseling and other services designed to help them leave the facility in a better position than when they entered.  Too often, however, the progress they make is squandered by lack of effective and timely re-entry planning, and paroled juveniles frequently re-offend.  In the City of Richmond, for example, many services are theoretically available to these young people but are not effectively coordinated and probation officers do not always have the information they need to make necessary referrals. 

"Marquis" is 17 years old.  He had been out of confinement and in the community for more than four months, and still none of the professionals involved had attempted to enroll him in school.  Marquis also suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder but received no mental health services or medication for the first four months following his release.  His behavior became more erratic and troubling, and within six months he had run away from home.  He was on the run for a month-and-a-half before landing back into detention and finally receiving the mental health care he needed.

For the last year, the JustChildren Program of the Legal Aid Justice Center already has been working in collaboration with a number of different agencies and providers, to both help individual paroled juveniles and analyze the barriers to achieving better results with this troubled population.  We have convened a stakeholder group focused on the issue of improving school re-enrollment, and over the next year hope to develop and institutionalize better planning and opportunities for paroled juvenile offenders in Richmond.  We plan to

• Coordinate an organized approach among state and local officials and service providers to improve transition planning in Richmond, with the goal of creating earlier and comprehensive service planning

• Train all professionals serving this population to achieve better implementation of existing regulations governing transition planning and better use of available resources and best practices;

• Develop and distribute a comprehensive resource list for juvenile parolees; and,

• Work with city and state officials to create and support a “one-stop” service provision model, in order to efficiently and quickly connect paroled juveniles to all necessary critical supports.

For more information, view JustChildren's power point presentation, Coming Home:  A Brief Look at Reentry Issues for Virginia Families (2007). 

Juvenile Transfer 

As a key partner in the national Campaign for Youth Justice, JustChildren is now devoting resources and attention to the problem of children being convicted and confined as adults, also known as "juvenile transfer."  As in all of our work, JustChildren advocates learn best about the problems of the juvenile transfer system by representing individual children who have been transferred to adult prisons.

In Commonwealth v JE, we represented a young man on appeal of a juvenile court judge’s decision to try him as an adult.  In the juvenile court he was represented by an attorney who had never before represented someone on a felony charge and the judge transferred his case.  On appeal we were successfully able to persuade the Circuit Court Judge to send his case back to juvenile court where we were then able to favorably resolve the case.  Our client -- who could have ended up in an adult prison receiving no assistance or support -- went to live with his grandparents, received counseling, and started working a steady job.

We are currently working with the Campaign for Youth Justice to finalize a "Parent's Guide to Juvenile Transfer in Virginia."  The guide is now available to parents in draft form.  Read more. 

Policy Initiatives

The JustChildren program has worked in coalitions to secure important policy gains that directly benefit the children we serve.  These include:

• legislation that ensures better educational and mental health services for children returning home from detention centers;
• legislation to make sure that children have access to counsel at their initial detention hearing in juvenile delinquency proceedings; and
• a reduction in the number of children tried, convicted, and confined as adults.  

You can find information about other organizations working to reform juvenile justice at our JustChildren Program links page.