By Peggy Nicholson

In many respects, the evolution of juvenile court reform and school discipline reform follow similar trajectories. This Article begins by tracking those respective evolutions. Part I outlines the evolution of the juvenile court system in the United States and focuses on the fledgling system’s distinction of children from adults and its “rehabilitative ideal” that children could outgrow challenging behavior if given the right treatment and services. After a long period of “adultification” of the juvenile court in response to rising crime rates, more recent reform efforts have focused on returning to the early court’s rehabilitative model, including policies that would keep young children out of juvenile court altogether. With the context of the juvenile court’s evolution in mind, Part II tracks the history of exclusionary school discipline, which is defined as any school disciplinary action, typically a suspension or expulsion, that removes a student from his or her typical education setting. Many of the same rationales for the “adultification” of the juvenile court, including the myth of the juvenile superpredator and the rise of a zero-tolerance approach to discipline, led to a sharp increase in the use of exclusionary discipline throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. However, with a growing body of research showing the harm and inefficacy of exclusionary discipline, advocates for discipline reform have pushed to decrease its use, which has included proposals to ban or limit exclusionary discipline for young students. The efforts to protect young children from both juvenile court intervention and exclusionary discipline are explored respectively in Parts III and IV. Part III describes the movement to “Raise the Minimum Age” of juvenile court jurisdiction as an avenue to bar court processing for young children. Notably, Part III outlines the variety of rationales that have been used to support raising the minimum age and charts the success of the movement in the last decade. Against this backdrop, Part IV turns to the movement to end exclusionary discipline for young children. Although important differences between the juvenile court and school discipline exist, many of the same rationales that support keeping young children out of juvenile court also apply to protecting young children from exclusionary discipline. Despite these similar rationales, which are explored in Part IV, the movement to end exclusionary discipline for young children has had less success, with fewer states adopting these measures. Further, most states that have passed laws limiting school exclusion for young students still allow exclusions to move forward in many circumstances. Part IV tracks existing statewide efforts to limit exclusionary discipline for young children and describes some of the challenges faced by these reform efforts. Despite the challenges, there are also opportunities. Part V highlights lessons learned from the “Raise the Minimum Age” movement to make recommendations for building momentum for states to end exclusionary discipline for young children. Given the willingness in many states to protect young children from juvenile court intervention, there is hope that similar arguments and advocacy strategies can be utilized to advance statewide policies that will protect those same young children from the harm of exclusionary discipline.

11 Belmont Law Review 334-383 (2024)

By Holly Maclean, Fiona Dyer, Nina Vaswani, Deena Haydon, Maria Galli, Anthony Charles, Tim Bateman, & Ursula Kilkelly 

In 2021, in light of the commitment made by the Scottish Government to incorporate UNCRC into Scots Law, CYCJ convened a group of children’s rights experts from across England, Ireland, Jersey, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to consider the implications and challenges of UNCRC incorporation across their separate jurisdictions. 

‘Rights Respecting Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law’ shines a light on the discussions that took place within this forum. This briefing paper provides an overview of talking points within the group across the period May 2021 – September 2023, highlighting both the most pressing concerns for children’s rights across the nations, and the similarities and differences in policy and practice.

Glasgow: Children and Young People's Centre for Justice, 2024. 17p.

By Wren Collective

 Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court held that Clarence Earl Gideon, a man accused of a felony, had the right to an attorney, despite not being able to afford one. Since then, the constitutional right to counsel has continued to expand—to those facing incarceration for any criminal offense, to children facing delinquency charges, and to all critical stages of representation. As part of our research into whether, across the country, we are meeting Gideon's lofty promise, the Wren Collective examined the provision of indigent defense in Cuyahoga County. We chose to specifically focus on the representation Cuyahoga’s children were receiving for two reasons. First, the juvenile court and its assignment of counsel received media attention in early 2023, highlighting a unique characteristic about the county’s public defender. Unlike many offices across the country, the public defender was seeking more, rather than fewer, cases. Instead of an “overworked and underpaid” office, Cuyahoga appeared to have a reasonably compensated, skilled set of attorneys who wanted to provide representation to more kids. Second, throughout our initial interviews, we heard concerns about the representation children receive, especially when it comes to bindovers—transfers of juvenile cases to adult court. Cuyahoga sends more kids to adult court than any other county in Ohio, and the overwhelming majority of those kids are Black. As we looked closer at the system, we learned that the concerns people shared were justified. Cuyahoga’s juvenile court judges are under utilizing the county public defender, an office of trained and dedicated attorneys, social workers, investigators, paralegals, and clerks. Though the office can take more cases and is set up to provide the robust support that children often need, judges assign private attorneys over public defenders to the majority of the cases in the county. But those private attorneys are generally not providing similarly robust representation, and many do not appear to be qualified to take on the most serious cases in the county. That means that the majority of kids in Cuyahoga are losing out on representation that would likely serve them better. We also found that Cuyahoga’s assigned counsel system suffers both from too much interference and not enough oversight. Judges routinely pick attorneys to assign to cases, yet the court does little to ensure that those attorneys are meeting state education and experience requirements to serve as appointed counsel in those cases. The good news is Cuyahoga can fix these problems. We recommend that the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court appoint the public defender to represent all children facing delinquency charges, and that the public defender, rather than the court, determine when assigned counsel is needed. We also recommend the county establish an independent assignment process that adheres to a rotary system for attorney assignments, and that the attorneys who are on the assignment list be trained and their qualifications verified. We recognize our recommendations will take effort, political will, and commitment from multiple stakeholders to implement, but we are confident this is a place that is up to the challenge. Cuyahoga County bursts with possibility. It has the potential to do what seems impossible in other places—make real and lasting change. We hope that this report, with its focus on key problems and specific ways to solve them, will help it do so.