I maintain a 1968 newspaper clipping in my workplace, describing a King County juvenile courtroom listening to involving a pregnant 17-year-old runaway who “wept throughout her complete courtroom listening to.” My workplace is on the King County Superior Court docket the place I function chief decide of the Maleng Regional Justice Middle. The 17-year-old was my mom. The clipping jogs my memory how traumatic the legal justice system will be for a kid, one thing I finally realized firsthand.
By 1982, it was me in juvenile courtroom. I dropped out of highschool, with little discover from courts or college. However for the well timed intervention of some caring adults and the benefits I’ve as a white male, I may be in jail as we speak.
As a decide, I presided over the arraignment of some 2,000 folks in 2024, together with youngsters charged with critical crimes. A few of these younger folks will land within the Inexperienced Hill College, which serves boys and males ages 17-25, run by the Division of Youngsters, Youth, and Households. My two current visits to Inexperienced Hill College left me involved for the workers, the younger folks housed there and the group these younger folks will return to.
In conversations with Inexperienced Hill College residents and workers, I heard a remarkably constant narrative. The power was 30% over capability. There have been so many residents that the workers couldn’t safely transfer them, which means much less of the therapy meant to assist these younger folks return to the group. Much less therapy makes issues much less protected at Inexperienced Hill. Employees are reluctant to remain. With much less workers, there may be nonetheless much less therapy.
Having served on a number of nonprofit boards within the juvenile justice house, I’ve seen public sentiment swing dramatically over time, from voting to construct a brand new juvenile detention facility in King County, to wanting to shut it, to desirous to fill it. As I mentioned after I just lately returned to Inexperienced Hill with outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee and then-incoming DCYF Secretary Tana Senn, we want to have the ability to maintain a number of truths on the identical time — that the detention of juveniles needs to be uncommon, and for these already within the system, we have to safely home and serve them, for his or her sake and for the communities they’ll return to.
What I noticed at Inexperienced Hill isn’t sustainable. I’ve few instruments as a decide to assist the younger folks I see. When our courts refer younger folks to DCYF, we have to belief that they are going to be safely housed and have entry to the assets they should deal with the problems that introduced them into the system. For now, to satisfy that promise, we should always make investments upstream and downstream.
On the upstream aspect, legislators might quickly take into account proposals for elevated help to deal with truancy. Having been chronically truant earlier than dropping out of highschool, I recall spending my outing of college getting in bother and needing help that by no means got here.
The Legislature may have the chance to help diversion of younger folks from the juvenile justice system. I benefited from diversion a number of occasions when arrested as an adolescent. But, diversion is neither constantly used nor funded all through Washington.
Aside from truancy and diversion, legislators might have the prospect to require judges to extra totally study whether or not an adolescent can stay locally. Relatedly, I just lately testified within the Legislature in help of the Youth Hope Act — written partly by younger males housed at Inexperienced Hill — which might enable some in juvenile rehabilitation to hunt assessment earlier than being moved into the grownup system. Every of those upstream proposals deserves consideration as we work to deal with group security nearer to the group and farther from incarceration.
On the downstream aspect, our legislators might have the chance to supply extra assets to DCYF to soundly home and serve youth. My pal Jeremiah Bourgeois, with whom I served on the Washington Supreme Court docket’s Entry to Justice Board, was quoted in a Seattle Times editorial in December about his expertise with incarceration at Stafford Creek’s Intensive Administration Unit, which has been proposed as a website for extra juvenile detention: “This unit was designed to accommodate essentially the most unmanageable and harmful inmates — not just for safety, however for punishment.” His expertise and perspective are extremely worthwhile on this dialog.
Whereas I help assets for DCYF to deal with companies and security for employees and the younger folks they home, my hope is that as we proceed to speculate upstream and downstream, these extra downstream assets might be much less needed over time. For now, as a decide, I need as many instruments as potential to assist our younger folks and maintain our group protected, together with an extra website to alleviate overcrowding at Inexperienced Hill, whether or not that be in a modified house on the grounds of Stafford Creek or elsewhere.
After years of swinging public sentiment, I hope we are able to transfer previous pitting community-based applications in opposition to incarceration and perceive that we have to make investments all over the place within the youth justice system. The current dialogue in regards to the Patricia H. Clark Youngsters and Household Justice Middle in Seattle is probably the very best instance of the entice we fall into after we assume we now have solely two choices: Shut the middle or fill it. These are usually not the one choices. As a substitute, if we put money into workers and our younger folks at each stage within the system, upstream options might finally scale back the necessity for downstream ones, and but we might be prepared with all of the instruments we have to maintain our younger folks and our communities protected if our early interventions are usually not as profitable as we hope.
I believe lots about my mom and her expertise in juvenile courtroom. She handed away in 2024. She lived lengthy sufficient to see me profit from early interventions that took me away from juvenile courtroom, and to see me earn my GED, spend almost 15 years in legislation enforcement and be elected to the King County Superior Court docket. I used to be and am very lucky. My hope for our state is that we are going to put money into our younger folks and the protection of our group based mostly on the basic premise that they’re one and the identical.
