Judge Bans Sophomore From Violent Video Games After Threat

[mope54]

Because ....... the Judge hasn't really done anything yet because as we discovered through reading, so far there has been the initial arrest, an overnight in Juvy, and the Judge released the kid to his parents pending further action, to stay at home, stay off his phone, and stay off the violent video games. Overall very prudent advice, go home, take a chill pill kid, I'll get back to you in a couple days while we decide if we are going to go forward with charges.

Unless I'm getting something wrong here, it's what I got from the article.

He OR'ed him into the custody of his parents and the order approximates a typical bench probation. The charges will hang over his head until he satisfies the court or fucks up. If he fucks this up, the prosecutor will go forward with the charges (he's already charged, the next step is to set it for plea or trial).

EDIT:
To clear up any confusion, when you guys use the term "adjudication" that is referring to a formal judgement--a final disposition of a case. That would be following a plea or trial and finding of guilt.

Adjudication is not necessary for a court to impose an order on one's behavior. Perhaps that is the lost in translation in this discussion you two are having. This is true for both children and adults. Judges order civil injunctions all the time, they release people on bail and OR (own recognizance) subject to specific terms of behavior. All diversion courts can operate under court orders without adjudication--that's the entire premise of them. Diversion courts, like juvenile court (and family court, drug court, DUI court, etc.) are intended to process cases without going through the full gamut of the legal process.

They are "diverting" offenders around the system so that they do not process through the formal correctional facilities. If they fuck up, though, they'll be back and the sentence will increase (either more intensive supervision or formal processing, adjudication, and incarceration). Anyone who has ever had a DUI or minor drug possession charge, a bar fight, etc. and was told to go home, and so long as you kept out of trouble in a few years it would fall off your record (and if you fuck up it becomes a part of your permanent record) knows this process. Some of you have had traffic tickets and opted for traffic school, which is another form of diversion.

When the court releases you from custody, even if the state intends to prosecute you formally, you sign paperwork that agrees to certain stipulations. The court doesn't need to find you guilty in order to impose these things on you (constraints like not drinking alcohol even if you're over 21, not being around your victim, not being around other offenders, refusing to go to work or school, refusing to check in with the court, refusing to submit to a search of you or your property, for example). If you feel like this violates due process you're welcome to sit in custody instead of going home.

 

[lcpiper]

He OR'ed him into the custody of his parents and the order approximates a typical bench probation. The charges will hang over his head until he satisfies the court or fucks up. If he fucks this up, the prosecutor will go forward with the charges (he's already charged, the next step is to set it for plea or trial).

I didn't realize things worked so differently with juveniles, I thought the system used the same mechanisms, just different ways of addressing them. My understanding was that a person is typically arrested, booked, charged, arraigned, then tried. This looked to me as the point in time between booking and formal charges and arraignment, where the Judge had sent the boy home with parents and restricted his movement and activities awaiting either additional investigation or a decision from the prosecutors office on charges.

But you are saying that in this case, with juveniles, they can take a kid out of Juvi first thing in the morning and essentially try and sentence him the day immediately following arrest?

On Monday morning, one of the Roselle Police Department’s school resource officers “learned of a (Lake Park) student who made specific threats” against the school, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page. Police and school officials “acted quickly to curtail any chance of danger to our kids,” the department wrote in the post.

The youth appeared Tuesday afternoon in DuPage County juvenile court, where he is charged with felony disorderly conduct.

EDITED: I don't know if this is a really good resource or not, but it looks like it's matching up with what you have explained Mope54. I understand there can be different twists on it in different States.
https://www.impactlaw.com/criminal-law/juvenile/cases

 

[mope54]

I didn't realize things worked so differently with juveniles, I thought the system used the same mechanisms, just different ways of addressing them. My understanding was that a person is typically arrested, booked, charged, arraigned, then tried. This looked to me as the point in time between booking and formal charges and arraignment, where the Judge had sent the boy home with parents and restricted his movement and activities awaiting either additional investigation or a decision from the prosecutors office on charges.

But you are saying that in this case, with juveniles, they can take a kid out of Juvi first thing in the morning and essentially try and sentence him the day immediately following arrest?

There was no trial or formal sentence and there probably won't be if he abides by the release order. This is the same as adult courts, too. The main difference is that juvenile court systems were founded on the principle of parens patriae, which is the principle of a judge stepping in on behalf of the child to act as surrogate parent in the absence of competent parenting (which a juvenile offender is arguably evidence of the lack of competent parenting).

Over the past 20 or so years, when we were experiencing a sharp rise in violent crime overall and an increase in juvenile offenses (both in quantity and seriousness), while adults were receiving stricter sentencing many states started treating youth offenders as young adults. Legislatures increased punishments for them, lowered the ages where they could be remanded to adult courts (tried as adults), and expanded the scope of juvenile correctional facilities. In the past few years, some states are finally paying attention to the data and unwinding some of these more onerous sentencing schemas (sentencing first time or low-level offenders to a correctional facility leads to more frequent offenses upon release and more serious offenses than their original convictions; half are rearrested within their first year of release, that number goes up to 2/3 by year three, and over 3/4 by year 5).

The response has been all those examples of diversion courts I keep posting for you to read. The most common one that ordinary citizens are going to have experience with is traffic court. In traffic court, you can choose to take your case to trial and risk a judgement *or* you can simply take traffic school and the "offense" drops off your record without any further repercussions. If you fight it at trial, you risk losing and you risk your eligibility for traffic school (you usually can't fight it in court, lose the fight, and then ask the judge for traffic school). Traffic school is offered because it's a low risk way for the courts to bleed off case pressure from their impacted caseloads. The tradeoff is that you give up some of your due process rights for a quick and inexpensive resolution.

You get "diverted" around the formal court process, like a rock diverts water around a stream and makes it go in a different direction. Here you are going to go about your business parallel to the formal correctional system rather than being inside of it.

It's a lot easier to do this with a juvenile than with an adult, but it happens to adults, too. Remember, this isn't a sentence it's a court order. If I discovered your identity and filed a criminal complaint that you had threatened me online and the police arrested you for it, you'd be arraigned in court and ideally your counsel would argue that you should be released without any bail paid on your own recognizance. If the judge agrees, you would be released subject to the court's orders. One of the elements of the judge's orders would certainly be, "stay off [H]" and "do not interact with mope54." If you violate that order, that would be a separate offense and it would be used against you in a criminal trial.

Now, the judge could also just order you to be subjected to bench probation, which would look essentially the same as this case. During your arraignment (which does happen anytime between 1-3 days), the judge will ask how you plea. If you plea not guilty he'll set a hearing for you. If you plea guilty he can sentence you right then and there. Ideally, your attorney would have already worked something out with the prosecutor and so your answer will be, "your Honor, I did the threat on [H] against mope54 but it was a stupid mistake while I was upset and I won't do it again." (or your attorney will say something along those lines) and the judge will tell you that it's your lucky day and you can avoid all the bullshit of the legal system and simply go home and not participate on [H] for three years and not interact with mope54 for three years and if you do all these things and don't break the law in any other ways the case will disappear from your record for good. You can say fuck that I didn't do anything and you haven't convicted me so I want my due process rights, trial, and sentence and the whole nine yards or you can be smart about it and thank him for being lenient and go home that day.

 

[mope54]

EDITED: I don't know if this is a really good resource or not, but it looks like it's matching up with what you have explained Mope54. I understand there can be different twists on it in different States.
https://www.impactlaw.com/criminal-law/juvenile/cases

That's a good synopsis of the juvenile court system. Remember, the entire system was founded on this principle that the state should take the place of absent/ineffective/abusive parents. Parents are the primary agents of social control but they are ineffective or damaging for a variety of reasons. Originally, the courts saw juvenile offenses as largely a consequence of the parents' fault rather than children and juvenile courts were established to protect, correct, and facilitate children into law abiding adults.

It's only in modern punishment where we began treating children like adults and attributing criminal tendencies to them alone (rather than the adults who were supposed to be raising them). Even in these modern times, we still protect children differently as most states refuse to publish the identities of child offenders and allow sealing of their criminal records upon coming of age.

But the history of this is important to understand because it's the reason juvenile courts are more likely to follow an informal process (that is, they were specifically implemented to divert children away from formal adjudication and correctional facilities). Keep in mind, that over a hundred years ago (before we implemented juvenile courts and correctional facilities) juveniles were housed with adults (and men and women were housed together, as well). In the late 1800s we had waves of immigration, increased urbanization, and lots of indigent children wandering the streets committing crimes to keep alive. In modern times, some states like Illinois might adhere to that classic perspective of juvenile courts (or, more likely, we're looking at the difference between suburban white offenders vs. inner-city minority offenders) while others like Florida are going to take a more hardened and punitive stance.

Well, I'm deliberately leaving a lot of information out because it's my birthday today and I literally just emailed my students and told them I was not going to show up for corrections tonight and to watch a move, (They Call Us Monsters, which is about the juvi system and goes over some of this stuff. It's on netflix if you'd like to check it out) and turn an essay in next week

 

[lcpiper]

Happy B-Day Mope54, Do what you love