Last year, we took time to cover a controversial piece of legislation relevant to Californians—Senate Bill 1391. The multifaceted bill is meant to shift the focus away from incarceration and to reduce overcrowding in the criminal justice system. Moreover, SB 1391 addresses the “cradle to prison pipeline:” Opponents of the measure claim that it puts the needs of criminals over public safety.

As we reported, Governor Brown signed SB 1391 in the twilight of his gubernatorial tenure. In justifying the decision to endorse the bill, Governor Brown wrote: “There is a fundamental principle at stake here: whether we want a society which at least attempts to reform the youngest offenders before consigning them to adult prisons where their likelihood of becoming a lifelong criminal is so much higher.”

The controversial bill expands on the mandate of another piece of legislation, Proposition 57, passed in 2016. Under SB 1391 a district attorney can no longer make a motion to “transfer a minor from juvenile court to a court of criminal jurisdiction in a case in which a minor is alleged to have committed a specified serious offense when he or she was 14 or 15 years of age.”

SB 1391 Under Fire

Despite the passing and signing of SB 1391, opponents continue to attack the bill, including local prosecutors. They argue that the legislation conflicts with what the voters approved when they decided to support Prop 57.

“Our position then, as now, is that 1391 is unconstitutional but (the legislature) passed it regardless,” said Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig.

Even though prosecutors across the state continue to voice opposition to SB 1391’s mandate, more than 100 legal scholars from California universities signed a February white paper calling for SB 1391 to be upheld, according to The Sacramento Bee. The law experts hail from the University of Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, University of California, San Francisco’s Hastings College of the Law, and Stanford and UC Berkeley’s law schools. In the letter, the scholars assert that “opponents of S.B. 1391 mischaracterize the law to manufacture a controversy that does not really exist.”

“I support reform. I’m OK with the science that juveniles’ brains aren’t fully formed and that they shouldn’t necessarily be sent to prison,” said Reisig. “But when you look at terrible, violent offenses – if somebody 15 years old can be released at 25, it makes no sense to me from the standpoint of public safety.”

Since January 1, 2019, Sacramento judges have had to consider at least four SB 1391 cases, according to the article. The same is true for judges in Kern, Riverside, Solano, and Yolo counties. The juvenile justice argument surrounding SB 1391 is sure to continue even as lawmakers propose even more reforms.

Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland is proposing AB 1423. The bill, if passed, would allow minors whose felony cases were tried in adult court, then reduced to misdemeanors or dismissed, to file a petition to have their cases sent back to juvenile court.

California Juvenile Law Attorney

Attorney Katie Walsh has the experience to advocate for any family, no matter the crime, whose son or daughter is facing legal challenges. Please contact The Law Offices of Katie Walsh today to learn how she can mount a rigorous, committed legal defense for your loved one.

As the saying goes, ‘crime doesn’t pay;’ however, and as far as the state is concerned, criminals do. Everyone knows that in many cases if a person is caught, charged, and convicted of a crime, they are facing jail time. If the offender is a minor, they are remanded to a juvenile justice facility for a given length of time. The thing that most people do not know is that the easiest part of a given punishment is the time behind bars, the hard part is the financial costs that come with breaking the law. The economic toll extends far beyond retaining the services of an attorney, and remember, if you cannot afford a lawyer, then one will be provided for you.

Depending on the offense, sentencing can include victim restitution; and more times than not, people released from jails and prisons go on probation for varying lengths of time, all of which costs money. It is no different for juveniles either, except for who is responsible for paying the bills. Of course, it is unrealistic to think that a 16-year old can pay their legal fees, it isn’t as if they have high-paying jobs. So, the bills fall on mothers and fathers who, in most cases, are on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale.

The fees that the families of juvenile offenders are responsible for paying is a significant amount of money. According to The Crime Report, fees come from:

• Victim Restitution
• Baseline Fines
• Administrative Costs (i.e., probation, electronic monitoring, and public defenders)

High Pay and Low Gain

When a youth’s fines and fees are not paid, the debt is taken up by the tax franchise board which will garnish the money from parents’ paychecks, according to the article. Even still, Kate Weisburd, Director of the Youth Defender Clinic in California, says that counties end up paying in the long run. Recouping fines and fees from impoverished families ends up costing counties more than what offenders owe in the first place.

“[Counties] weren’t recouping much to begin with” said Weisburd, an alum of Brown University and Columbia Law School. “What happens is a family is billed $4,000 in administrative fees, and it would cost the county that much money to collect it. Processing costs so much and these poor families can’t afford to pay for it.”

The fact that adjustments need to come about isn’t lost on juvenile judges, according to the article. In fact, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges approved a resolution that would no longer require juveniles and their families to cover the legal costs. In California, a law went into effect this past January making it the first state to do away with fees for incarcerated youth. It may be more difficult in some states to enact such reforms; however, individual judges have the right to not levy fines and fees against minors.

Juvenile Defense Attorney

At the Law Offices of Katie Walsh, we specialize in juvenile law. If your son or daughter is facing criminal charges, Attorney Walsh can assist you and your family in several ways. Please contact our office for a free consultation.

When you or someone else sits down with a therapist, or medical professional of any kind,— they typically expect some level of privacy. That’s what they say will be protected by the patient rights. Not only is patient privacy of the utmost importance to patients, it is vital to therapists for building a bond of trust with their patients. Without a relationship that is built upon a foundation of privacy, it is unlikely that patients will be honest about what they are struggling with; therefore, impeding any therapeutic progress.

But what happens when a patient’s right to privacy could result in potentially harming or continued harm of another? When it comes to the sexual exploitation of minors in California, the law says that a patient’s right to privacy is trumped by a minor’s right to protection. The Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA) requires all licensed therapists in California, among others, to report to authorities when they have “reasonable suspicion” of child abuse or neglect. The legislation calls for therapists to report to police when a patient admits to viewing child pornography.

As you can probably gather on your own, there are some concerns about that last requirement. A two-year battle that was waged to protect patient rights came to a close when a California appeals court upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the requirement to report patients who viewed child pornography to the police, The Los Angeles Times reports. The group of therapists and counselors who filed the suit argued that the CANRA mandate violated a patient’s constitutionally protected privacy rights.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who initially tossed out the lawsuit, stated that there’s no “zone of privacy” for illegal conduct, according to the article. A three-judge panel for the 2nd District Court of Appeals supported the ruling.

“Not only is it illegal, the conduct is reprehensible, shameful and abhorred by any decent and normal standards of society,” the ruling stated. “There is no egregious breach of social norms in requiring reports of such criminal activity.”

Katie Walsh has fought numerous cases of Child Pornography in Juvenile Court with good outcomes. Please contact the Law Office of Katie Walsh if your child has been involved in Sexting, Social Media or Child Pornography issues.

With November 8, 2016, seemingly long behind us, it is time for California defenders, prosecutors and judges to change their ways with regard to juveniles. California voters supported putting an end to what is known as “direct file,” a law that gave prosecutors the authority to dictate which juveniles would be tried in adult criminal court.

Concerns over direct file had been voiced for years, since the majority of teens being tried in adult court were minorities. Prosecutors in a number of California counties had been quick to direct file minorities, glaringly disproportionate to the instances of young Caucasians being direct filed. With the passing of Proposition 57, which gives judges the power to decide which minors are tried in adult court. The decision grants every juvenile the right to a hearing before a judge can make the decision to transfer a suspect to adult court, The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (JJIE) reports. With regard to Prop. 57:

“It allows a more deliberative approach, a more thoughtful approach and that’s the way it should work. It shouldn’t be a quick decision, made sometimes in as little as 48 hours, often with scant information,” said Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.

Naturally, there is a lot of work that needs to be done by everyone working in the field of juvenile justice, in order to ensure that the law works the way that is was designed. What’s more, Prop. 57 will lead to a number of adolescents, who would have historically been subject to direct file, staying within the juvenile courts, meaning the juvenile system will need to be prepared to offer services to significantly more teens, according to the article. Additionally, nobody is sure yet how Prop. 57 will apply to the thousands of teens who have already been transferred to the adult courts and are potentially serving time behind bars in adult jails and prisons.

The new law gives California judges a new criterion for deciding which juveniles should be sent up to adult court, the article reports. Judges will now take into consideration a juvenile defendant’s “ongoing development and potential to change” before making a decision that could forever change the course of one’s life.

“The things that a court will look at are much more helpful to teenagers than the previous criteria were. They’re much more developmentally appropriate,” said Sue Burrell, policy and training director for the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center.

Katie Walsh is an attorney in Orange County, California. Attorney Walsh concentrates her law practice on juvenile defense, criminal defense, and victim’s rights.

Contact the Law Offices of Katie Walsh online or at (714) 351-0178.

Over the summer, we wrote about what is known as “direct file,” where states prosecutors have discretionary power about which court system to try a minor: juvenile or adult criminal court. California is one of 15 states that allows prosecutors to dictate the severity of an offense, deciding which court a juvenile case should be tried.

We pointed out that, direct file is used more commonly in certain California counties and that minorities are disproportionately affected by the process. The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice found that black youth were 11.3 times more likely to be direct filed, compared to white minors. It should go without saying that being tried in the juvenile system is preferred over the adult-court, and the decision could seriously impact the future of a defendant.

California voters will decide on changing direct file, as part of Proposition 57, on November 8, 2016, KALW reports. Prop 57 seeks to reduce the prison population, save taxpayers millions and requires judges instead of prosecutors to decide whether minors should be prosecuted as adults, emphasizing rehabilitation for minors in the juvenile system.

“The race of the child and the county in which he or she commit this crime will determine whether or not he’ll be direct filed, not the severity of the crime,” says Frankie Guzman from the National Center of Youth Law “and that is not what we should be basing these decisions on.”

Teenagers who find themselves caught in the adult criminal system are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to rehabilitation. Prop 57 aims to give people a chance to turn their life around, rather than possibly condemn them to a life in the system.

“Not only are we denying the benefit of rehabilitation, we are ensuring all the negatives that the adult system carries,” Guzman says. “And so we often see young kids who really quickly have to grow and develop in a prison environment that is extremely violent.”

Instead of prosecutors deciding the fate of young people, minors would have a fitness hearing in juvenile court, the article reports. A judge will take a look at all the factors before deciding if a young defendant should be tried as an adult.

Katie Walsh is an attorney in Orange County, California. Attorney Walsh concentrates her law practice on juvenile defense, criminal defense, and victim’s rights.

Contact the Law Offices of Katie Walsh online or at (714) 351-0178.