OJJDP Family Listening Sessions: Executive Summary - Office of ...

Questions and Responses
Question 1—Involvement With the System
Think about when your child and your family first got involved with the system. What did
you expect it to be like and how was it different
The families identified several issues related to their first involvement with the system, which
included:
• Lack of access to counsel.
• No available prevention/intervention services for children’s issues before they enter the
system.
• Issues with unsafe housing.
• Inadequate health care and nutritious food.
Lack of Access to Counsel
Parents were called when their children were first arrested. They often had to make difficult
decisions on the spot without the benefit of counsel to advise them whether their child should
cooperate with law enforcement. It became the parents’ responsibility to tell their children what
to do, and they ended up being the de facto counsel. This arrangement often led to an uninformed
waiver of the child’s Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.
No Available Prevention/Intervention Services
Parents described scenarios in which their children started to have behavioral or mental health
issues at home or school; however, they were unable to find resources or support in the
community prior to their children’s entry into the system. It was not until the child became
involved in the system that they received the help they were hoping for or expecting. Parents also
talked about failures in the schools and the lack of community response to issues such as truancy,
which are considered as “pipelines” to detention.
Parents stated that alternative high schools are nothing more than a dumping ground for the “bad
kids” and a pipeline to detention or adult jail. Parents referred to them as holding facilities for jail
and perceived the teachers assigned to teach at the alternative schools as the worst of the worst.
They shared that there is a stigma associated with these schools; therefore. placement in such a
school is humiliating to children.