4/06/2013
Report faults Mo. defense of juveniles
by Scott Lauck and Donna Walter
Missouri Lawyers Weekly
A national report released Thursday says Missouri’s system of legal defense for juveniles is structurally
deficient and riddled with conflicts of interest.
The report from the National Juvenile Defender Center says that under Missouri’s system, “youth are
discouraged from and systematically denied counsel throughout the state,” and that as many as 60
percent of kids in trouble are navigating the system without advocates who are clearly on their side.
“What we saw from county to county was that, in many instances, youth just go through the court
system without lawyers,” Mary Ann Scali, deputy director of the national advocacy group, said in an
interview.
The report lauds Missouri’s corrections system for youth offenders, which relies on small, regional
facilities that focus on providing rehabilitative services. But the state puts less emphasis, the report says,
on keeping juveniles out of the system in the first place.
According to the report, many children facing everything from criminal charges to curfew violations are
represented by deputy juvenile officers, who perform a similar function to probation officers. DJOs, the
report says, work for the judicial circuits’ juvenile offices. On one hand they work to protect the
juveniles’ rights, but on the other they facilitate interviews with law enforcement and help determine
how cases proceed. The report describes those varying duties as an inherent conflict.
“This role — acting as both an arm of the prosecution and a protector of due process rights — may be
unique to Missouri DJOs,” the report says.
Access to lawyer
Very few juveniles have access to a lawyer or are encouraged to get one, the report says. According to
the report, 4,631 juvenile delinquency and status offense cases were filed in Missouri in fiscal year 2012,
but the state’s public defender system was assigned only 1,923 of them, and another 24 went to private
counsel. The report says it was unclear who, if anyone, was representing the remaining 60 percent of
juvenile offenders.
The report indicated in many juvenile courts, zealous advocacy by attorneys on behalf of young clients
was seen as a barrier to getting them services through the correctional system. Attorneys handling
juvenile cases, both public and private, often had little training in juvenile legal issues and spent minimal
time with their clients, the report says.
Cat Kelly, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, says juvenile courts may be operating
under the impression that counsel is not necessary in juvenile cases.
“Because the people working with the juveniles really, I believe, do have the best interests of the child at
heart, they want to move toward providing services that they believe that child needs,” she said in an
interview. “Which is fabulous, except that unless the child actually did something wrong, they shouldn’t
be in the system at all.”
According to the report, juvenile cases make up just 2.36 percent of the public defender caseload. The
public defender system used to have a series of juvenile advocacy units devoted to such representation,
but they were eliminated in 2007.
The defender system has argued for years that its caseload is too high and has lobbied for additional
state funding, with limited success. Kelly said policymakers may decide public defenders should meet
the need, or they may decide to meet it in some other way.
The report pointed out that there are few jurisdictions that rigorously defend juveniles’ right to counsel.
One of those might be St. Louis County, where Family Court Administrator Kip Seely said officials make
sure juveniles are represented at critical junctures in the system.
“In any serious case, if there’s a possibility the juvenile might be committed to the Division of Youth
Services, we require that the juvenile be represented by counsel,” he said. The court also requires legal
representation for juveniles at their detention hearings and for juveniles charged with felonies, Seely
said.
The report was done with the cooperation of the Missouri court system and is based on a series of
anonymous interviews and site visits with courts throughout Missouri.
Scali, of the Juvenile Defender Center, said Missouri is one of 21 states whose juvenile systems the
group has studied. She said other states have shown similar problems, but that Missouri’s lack of
representation appears to be more drastic than elsewhere.
Among other things, Scali recommended that the state form a commission to further study the issue and
find a way to provide better youth representation.
“We completely recognize that Missouri is bankrupt in terms of defender services,” she said. “But youth
really shouldn’t be compelled to go through a system that’s hard for adults to navigate without a
lawyer.”