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News Summary
January 22 – February 4, 2011
Not every child who comes before the board is successful, Marchand said.
Some kids have simply made a mistake, learn from it and move on. Others are acting out because
of substance-abuse issues or because there is domestic violence, physical abuse or sexual abuse
in the home. Some have parents who are in prison, indifferent, inexperienced or overwhelmed.
Board members recognize they have only three months to help, and they can't force parents to
seek counseling or attend parenting classes, Marchand and Burns said.
"Some parents don't seem to care, and their participation is minimal, so we just focus on the kids
and try to help them succeed despite their parents," Burns said. "Some parents work their tail off to
help their kids."
Whatever the parents' participation, Burns said, "We are planting seeds. We are giving them little
pearls of wisdom."
Joe Bevington, whose first involvement with the program was as a victim, said an advantage of the
program is that judges don't have time to get at the real issues that might be prompting kids to act
out. Community Justice Boards dig deeper and find solutions that work better, he said, than
punishment.
The 15-year-old shoplifter must write letters of apology, an essay about what she learned from her
experience, and a pretend magazine article about peer pressure based on interviews with five
people. She's also required to participate in the Girls Moving Forward program, which helps girls
increase their self-esteem, and the Goodwill GoodGuides youth-mentoring program and discuss
the wrongness of her actions with her younger brothers.
"Punishing them is not going to solve anything," Bevington said. Better to give them the tools to
figure out what's going on, he said, and help them tackle the issues they face.
Santa Clara County officials pledge big changes to juvenile justice
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
By Karen de Sá
January 25, 2011
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_17200563?nclick_check=1
Santa Clara County officials announced far-reaching plans to remake the local juvenile justice
system this week, pledging to keep the youngest offenders out of jail and ensure that all others are
handled differently than adult criminals.
In his State of the County address Tuesday, Supervisor Dave Cortese said his goal is to "put
juvenile hall out of business" by eventually raising the age limit for entry to 16.
While current board policy discourages entry for those 12 and younger, county officials have been
stung in recent years by Bay Area News Group reports that children as young as 10 had been
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