Caring For Our Children

By Elizabeth C. Dede

One of the first horror stories I heard from the fledgling Prison & Jail Project in the early 1990s was a Juvenile Justice story. A young man in high school had been taken off to prison for sassing his teacher, without any due process. All of us who heard this story were dumbfounded, and I vowed to find some way to devote my life to make some changes for the young people down here in Sumter County.

It took me about 8 years to make the move from Atlanta to Americus, and during the 7 years that I worked at the Prison & Jail Project, I didn’t have many opportunities to work in the Juvenile Justice System. Children are supposed to be offered a higher level of protection, and unless parents and guardians specifically and officially request my assistance, I am legally not allowed to participate in any phase of the Juvenile Justice process.

Georgia’s Juvenile Justice Code is approximately 40 years old. It contains very outdated ideas about the development of children. It obviously does not take into account all of the vast changes in mental health treatment, education, technology, illegal drugs, the collapse of the nuclear family, and many other social changes that have taken place in our world during the past 4 decades.

When I first heard the story in the early 1990s of the young man taken off to prison without even a hearing, I almost couldn’t believe it was true, except that I do have enough cynicism in my personality to believe that the white power structure in Americus would do that to a young African American man who talked back to a teacher because she called him by a racial slur.

I thought that instance was an aberration, though, but today I found out that it’s perfectly legal to send a child off to the Youth Development Campus (that’s a children’s prison) without a hearing, and without even calling their parents or guardian. It happens like this: the arresting officer calls the Juvenile Judge and explains the reason for the arrest. Then the judge agrees that the child needs to be in prison. The child doesn’t even have a chance to offer a defense. And it’s all completely legal.

The child whose case I learned about has been locked up since August 24. He is mentally ill and needs treatment, not prison. One member of the Juvenile Justice System told me that we don’t have anywhere near enough of the services necessary to care for the mental health needs of our children in Sumter County. If a Juvenile Court Judge requests an evaluation, this can take up to 10 days. If a child needs a placement in a residential treatment program, the waiting list can stretch into months.

In January, our state legislators will convene, and a new Juvenile Justice Code will be one of the pieces of legislation in 2009. We need to work to get this Code passed.

If you have experience with the Juvenile Justice System, and have stories to tell, contact Elizabeth Dede at elizabeth@koinoniapartners.org.

Our children deserve the best care we can offer them