But as someone who cares deeply about the integrity of the juvenile justice system, it is difficult to be quiet.

Thankfully, contemporary cultural philosopher Henry Rollins came to the rescue this morning.  In an eloquent, plain-spoken blog post he framed the issues beautifully, especially the issue of punishment:

After reading posts for quite awhile, I thought first about the two young men. I wondered if the years in the facility will “help” them. What, exactly does one “learn” in one of these places? That is to say, after five years locked away, does the idea of assaulting a woman seem like the wrong thing to do, more than if you were incarcerated for one year? Would you be “more sorry” about what you did? Is that possible? Or, would you just be more sorry for yourself about where your actions landed you? At what point do you get “better”, how many years in one of these places does that take?

This is a real problem here in Los Angeles County.  The goal of the juvenile justice system is supposed to be “rehabilitation”, but unfortunately the system seems far more interested in “punishment.”  Except for a few notable exceptions, juvenile facilities in LA County are preoccupied with teaching kids how to submit to authority, not treating or rehabilitating.  Some of you reading think that’s what these kids need and I agree that a structured environment is important,  but let’s look a little deeper .

In Los Angeles County when a child is declared a ward of the delinquency court, unless a he or she is allowed to remain “home on probation”, he or she gets sent to one of three places:

• A “probation camp” for a period of 3 to 9 months. This is a “boot camp” type facility that I like to call “county jail with training wheels.”

• A “suitable placement facility” Depending on the child’s home life or any psychological issues, the child is placed in a group home which may or may not have a treatment component.  Kids are here for indeterminate period of time.  The court can maintain jurisdiction until the age of 21.

• Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ).  This is state prison for kids.  The only kids eligible to be sent here those who are found to have committed serious or violent offenses (strikes under California’s Three Strikes laws) . Kids can be kept there until they are 25.

So if this were Los Angeles County, what would be the appropriate disposition for the Steubenville kids?

What they did to the victim was horrible, period. Something must be done.  And let’s assume that the Ohio charges sustained against them were  the equivalent of “serious or violent offenses” aka “strikes” under California’s Three Strikes law.  Do you send these kids to DJJ until their 25? Is that the answer?

DJJ only houses 750 kids.  These are kids whom  the court believes has repeatedly engaged in  very serious criminal conduct:  Drive-by shootings, violent takeover robberies involving firearms,  kidnappings for robbery,  kids who are deeply entrenched in street gangs, and yes…also minors accused of violent sexual assaults.

But on a gut level, does that really feel like the Steubenville kids?  Do you want to warehouse these boys until their 25 with the hardest of hardcore?  These kids wouldn’t make it there for a minute.   Is this going to rehabilitate them or is this going to be a graduate school for further serious criminal conduct?

So let’s take DJJ off the table.  What if the Steubenville boys were sent to a “suitable placement” group home or a short-term probation camp. People would be up in arms and outraged that they got away with a seemingly light punishment.  Especially because in California, minors who sustain sex crime charges but are not sent to DJJ are not required to register as offenders nor would this be a qualifying offense towards California’s Sexual violent Predator law.  And while I do not believe in of sex offender registration for minors, if there were no registration requirement in this case, the outcry would be 10 times as loud.

There are approximately 300 inmates in California who received life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles.  Most of these involve murder convictions for acts that took place when the juvenile was 16 or 17 years old.

Under the new law, which was referred to as SB9 as it wound its way through the legislative process, these inmates may petition a judge to reconsider sentence if they meet certain conditions.  Most importantly, the inmate must serve at least 15 years in prison before they have the right to petition the court for a reduced sentence.  If a judge finds sufficient evidence of remorse and rehabilitation, the judge has the authority to reduce the sentence to 25 years to life.  That would provide an opportunity for the inmate to be released from prison at some point in the future.

As a parent, I am sympathetic to the families of the victims of the crimes that resulted in the life sentence.  Some of these families opposed this bill on the grounds that they were promised that the kids who murdered their loved ones would never be released from prison.  I can see why such families might see this new law as unfair.

As a criminal defense lawyer who represents juveniles in Los Angeles, I know that the brain of a juvenile is different than that of an adult.  Juveniles have less impulse control.  That does not of course justify committing crimes, let alone murder.  It does, however, suggest that putting away juveniles for life is a bad idea unless you include some mechanism that allows for judicial review of the sentence.  Given what we now know about juvenile brain development, we should not be promising victims’ families that the 16 or 17 year old who was convicted will never leave prison.

SB9 is a good and modest step towards making sure that we align our juvenile justice system with what we are increasingly learning about juveniles and how they are different from adults.  Governor Brown was right to sign SB9 into law.

Some people who support this practice also point out that it is cheaper and in the short run more effective than fixing crumbling schools, making them safer, funding them properly, or doing the other things that would improve the academic performance of our children.

Several educators contacted for this article considered the subject of A.D.H.D. so controversial — the diagnosis was misused at times, they said, but for many children it is a serious learning disability — that they declined to comment. The superintendent of one major school district in California, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that diagnosis rates of A.D.H.D. have risen as sharply as school funding has declined.

“It’s scary to think that this is what we’ve come to; how not funding public education to meet the needs of all kids has led to this,” said the superintendent, referring to the use of stimulants in children without classic A.D.H.D. “I don’t know, but it could be happening right here. Maybe not as knowingly, but it could be a consequence of a doctor who sees a kid failing in overcrowded classes with 42 other kids and the frustrated parents asking what they can do. The doctor says, ‘Maybe it’s A.D.H.D., let’s give this a try.’ ”

As a parent, I can see how doctors decide to ignore broader societal issues to do what they think is right for an individual student.  But as a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer who defends juveniles accused of committing crimes, I know that the New York Times story misses an important aspect of prescribing Adderall to more students.  Under federal law, Adderall is a Class II controlled substance; same as cocaine.  It is a crime to use Adderall for non-therapeutic reasons.  When doctors give more students Adderall, they also increase the chances that their patients will share the drugs with friends and classmates who have not received a prescription.  This may not sound like a big deal, but it is.

Many states, including California, are increasingly cracking down on students who possess or distribute prescription drugs such as Adderall.  That is one reason why as matter of social matter, it’s not sensible both to encourage doctors to hand out Adderall and then criminalize the unauthorized use of Adderall by juveniles.   If, as a society we make the decision not to invest adequately in our schools, let’s not make the situation worse by criminalizing the possession of small amounts of Adderall by kids.

Unfortunately, more and more juveniles are being ensnared by the criminal justice system in connection with prescription drugs.  That’s why it’s critical to work with lawyers who are experienced in defending juveniles in criminal matters.

According to the Loveland Reporter Herald schools across the country have been banning the wearing of the beads because they are known to be used by gangs including the Surenos and the Latin Kings to mark membership.

The district’s fears were furthered by the fact that [the student's] string had on it 13 beads – a number associated with the Surenos – rather than the traditional 10.

But is the 13 bead rosary that unusual?  No.

It is, in fact, quite common for a rosary to have “thirteen” beads, depending on how you describe the arrangement of those beads. A typical rosary is divided into “decades,” strings of ten beads, with a single bead dividing each of the decades. There are five decades on a complete rosary. The five decades of beads (plus four dividing beads) form the main portion of the rosary, linked together by a medallion of some sort (typically, but again, styles vary widely.) Hanging down from the medallion will be five more beads: a single bead, a group of three beads, a single bead, and then a cross or crucifix icon.

However, it is not uncommon for a sort of “mini-rosary” to be sold with a string of ten beads. Such items are in wide use and are certainly a part of traditional Catholic prayer rituals. On such items, there are sometimes only one additional bead between the medallion and the crucifix icon, leaving a total of eleven beads. It is also fairly common, however, to see three beads between the medallion and the crucifix– making a total of thirteen beads on the rosary. An example of one such thirteen bead rosary: the last item for sale here (http://www.totallycatholic.com/single.htm). One can see that the last example is a very cheaply made, inexpensive rosary, all plastic; that is a good indicator of the level of wide distribution this style might be expected to receive. They are meant for giving away… perhaps to a group of school kids, for instance.

But this story brings to light a more perplexing and disturbing problem. These school educators can hardly be blamed for their ill-conceived position on this issue, as they are in many ways simply following a well-established trend in law enforcement towards its next logical step. In courtrooms across Los Angeles, across California and all over the western United States today, one will find law enforcement officers styled as “gang experts” who will tell you, under oath and in the face of cross-examination, that what transmutes an ordinary, innocuous symbol into a gang symbol is the person who is wearing it. They’ll also testify that what transmutes a person into a gang member is the fact that he or she is wearing a gang symbol. The circularity ensues:

Q: “How do you know this person is a gang member?”

A: “For one thing, he’s got a gang symbol. A Raider’s helmet.”

Q:  “Are all Raiders helmet tattoos gang symbols?”

A:  “Only when they’re being worn by suspected gang members.”

Now, of course, merely having a tattoo, possessing a certain symbol, carrying an article, or the like cannot by itself make you a gang member. The other pieces of this equation? Association with “known” gang members, and oftentimes, a shared ethnicity with that gang. In short, a young Latino or Latina who grew up in a neighborhood where there are gangs (thus associating him or her with gang members by default; every kid from that neighborhood went to the same school) with a Raiders helmet tattoo has a gang tattoo.

It’s almost to be expected, then, that this insidious, vaguely circular reasoning would extend to other symbols ubiquitous in Latino culture. The rosary is certainly that, which leads one to wonder: What about images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom the rosary prayer is so often dedicated?

La Virgen is certainly an even more common image, whether on an elaborate mural, a beautify tapestry, a cheaply made candle, or a tattoo. Can we consider this deeply cherished, culturally distinctive, powerful spiritual beacon a gang symbol as well? You’ll find Her associated with young Latinos and Latinas everywhere, including that relatively small percentage of the demographic who belong to a criminal street gang.

When this young Latino boy brings a rosary to campus, he’s bringing a gang symbol to school. When and elderly white woman does the same, most assuredly, no one will ever make the same assumption. If this sounds sinister to you, please know: this kind of thinking merely follows the lead set by the so-called gang experts now dictating public policy and determining the outcome of criminal justice proceedings throughout America.

The brain scan evidence was introduced as part of a hypothetical case that was shown to 181 state court judges.  As reported in The New York Times, the hypothetical case involved a man who beat a restaurant manager with the butt of a gun.

In the study, three researchers at the University of Utah tracked down 181 state judges from 19 states who agreed to read a fictional case file and assign a sentence to an offender, “Jonathan Donahue,” convicted of beating a restaurant manager senseless with the butt of a gun. All of the judges learned in their files that Mr. Donahue had been identified as a psychopath based on a standard interview — that is, he had a history of aggressive acts without showing empathy.

The case files distributed to the judges were identical, except that half included testimony from a scientist described as “a neurobiologist and renowned expert on the causes of psychopathy,” who said that the defendant had inherited a gene linked to violent, aggressive behavior. This testimony described how the gene variant altered the development of brain areas that generate and manage emotion.

The neurobiological evidence tended to impact the judge’s sentences in two, contradictory ways.  Evidence that the defendant was psychopathic increased his sentence, but evidence that the defendant inherited a gene linked to violent behavior reduced the sentence imposed by the judges.

This study has far reaching and potentially troubling implications, especially for juveniles who are charged with serious, violent offenses.  The study makes clear that judges are influenced by neurobiological evidence.  On the one hand, that means that prosecutors and judges may rely too heavily on scientific evidence to conclude that a juvenile poses a long-term threat to society.  That is what happened when the judges were confronted with scientific evidence that the defendant in the hypothetical was a psychopath. On the other hand, brain scans provide hope that juveniles and others accused of crimes will be treated in a way that takes their individual circumstances, history, and predispositions into account much more than they are today.  This is what led judges to show greater leniency based on the testimony of a neurobiological expert.

As a juvenile defense lawyer in Los Angeles, one of my first reactions to reading this study related to resources.  Specifically, how on earth is the juvenile justice system going to find the money and other resources to introduce brain scan evidence in juvenile cases?  At the moment, brain scan evidence has been introduced in very few cases, most notably in death penalty cases, and usually during the appeal of those cases.  Because the brains of juveniles are still changing, neurobiological evidence is potentially more important in juvenile cases than in cases involving adults.  This is especially true where juveniles are charged with serious violent crimes.

The article published in Science may usher in the beginning of a new era in the use of brain scans in criminal cases.  That may be the future.  If it is, the juvenile justice system will need to make enormous changes to make that future a reality.