Being a parent isn’t easy, and if your child has been engaging in criminal behaviors, even just misdemeanor, this can be hard enough to deal with. However, it only gets harder when there are legal consequences involved. The vast majority of the time when children and teenagers act up, all problems, solutions, and consequences are dealt with inside the circle of family and school. This keeps behavior concerns private and the long-term consequences are usually minimal. But when the law gets involved, your child’s entire future might be at stake depending on the severity of their crime and the variable security of sealed juvenile records.
If your child has been charged with a juvenile crime, please don’t make the mistake of thinking this can be a minor matter you can sort out with the judge and move on from without a thought. The biggest problem for most parents with a child in juvenile court is that good parenting says “Admit what you did wrong and make up for it” but in the legal system, admission can come with life-long consequences. Not just grounding and chores.
Based on the crime in question, the discretion of the judge, and what occurs during your child’s court dates, the consequences for admission (the juvenile equivalent of pleading guilty) or adjudication (the equivalent of being found guilty) can include anything from small fines to removal from your custody for juvenile confinement. Whatever else happens, a juvenile record is created that, while theoretically private after 18, is a lot more accessible than people think. If you’re worried about your child’s future, you have good reason to be. Here’s a nearly complete list of measures the court can take in sentencing your child.
Dispositional Alternatives
The first thing to understand about juvenile sentencing is the dispositional alternatives approach. While crimes are still defined using adult laws to establish that a child or teen has legally committed specific crimes like vandalism, arson, or OUI, juveniles are almost never subject to the full adult legal consequences of these crimes. Instead, the court will do it’s best to find a solution that achieves discouragement and rehabilitation instead. For you, this means that except in extreme cases, your child won’t be going to real jail or paying full fines Instead, the court is going to use dispositional alternatives like probation, fines, community service, drug treatment programs, and so on to try and keep your child in your home, in your custody, and on the path to recovery.
Probation
Probation is a term that most adults are familiar with and often this is the opening move of juvenile court. Probation is used any time the court would like to encourage someone they don’t want to see in trouble again to stay on the straight and narrow. For juveniles, the terms for probation are approximately the same as for adults. Your child must stay away from alcohol, drugs, bad behavior. They may also be required to stay in school and/or get themselves a job to stay busy.
Fines and Repaying Damages
If your child’s criminal activities damaged the property of, took money from, hurt, or even badly frightened someone, they (and therefore you) may be required to pay restitution. What restitution generally means is that that fines taken from you and paid to the victims will not exceed the value the court judges to have been damaged or deprived by the crime.
Of course, restitution isn’t the only way you might have to pay. While juveniles don’t have to pay the normal legally suggested fines for their specific crime, your family may still be asked to pay a fine as part of the sentencing. It’s just less likely to break the bank.
Work and Service Programs
By far the most common sentence that juveniles face is the requirement to perform community service through a work program or service program. Assigning your child to perform a certain number of hours of community service can be generic, as in “Find some community service to do and bring back reports of doing it” or specific in which the court assigns your child to work or service program they need to show up for and participate in to stay on the right side of the court. Community service can be enjoyable and educational or grueling and boring but you as the parent may be able to have a say if you know how to approach the issue.
Suspended Driver’s License
For juveniles involved in drugs, alcohol, or vehicle moving violations, the court will not hesitate to remove their right to all forms of driver’s license and may even revoke their right to drive recreational vehicles that are normally alright for children and teens to drive on family land. However, this usually isn’t just a normal suspension. The vast majority if the time a juvenile loses their license, they won’t be able to get a new one until their either 18 or even 21 depending on the sentence.
Counseling and Treatment
For drug problems, major behavioral problems, and situations where the court deems that your child’s can be prevented from repeating through court-ordered treatment, that’s what will happen. In most cases, a juvenile will stay with their parents and be required to attend regular counseling or drug treatment sessions either one-on-one with a professional or in group treatment with other juveniles who have similar problems. While your child may not be thrilled about going to counseling, this is often the best case scenario for juvenile sentencing for more serious of worrying offenses but it also often tacked onto more extreme sentencing.
Custody Removal
Unfortunately, counseling is where we come to the end of the friendly options. If the court decides that your home life is to blame for the misbehavior or if the home life will get in the way of recovery, they may decide to take your child out of your custody and put them into a variety of confinement or care options. For extreme drug treatment, your child may be put into a residential rehabilitation program to help them kick the habit in a completely clean environment away from the influences that may have caused or perpetuated the drug problem.
For crimes and judicial decisions that conclude that your child is violent and dangerous and either isn’t safe or cannot be controlled in your home, they may be sentenced to a certain number of days in juvenile confinement, often known as Juvie Hall. This confinement is not just going to a different school, it’s jail for underaged criminals.
Finally, if upon examining your home life, the court decides that you are unfit parents, sentencing your child’s crime will also involve removing them from your custody entirely and placing them in the care of family services from which all other consequences will be enacted.
Trial as an Adult
Finally, there is the possibility that the crime is severe enough, your child may even be tried as an adult with the full consequences of real imprisonment sentencing and full-sized fines. This is the worst possible scenario to be avoided at all costs, as teenagers tried as adults very rarely ever see a normal life on the other side of it.
If your child has been charged with a crime or you think they might be in the near future, the time to get legal counsel is now. Do not admit guilt, do not underestimate the courts, and do not assume that everything will turn out “alright” just because the premise of juvenile court is rehabilitation. For expert legal advice and guidance through this incredibly difficult time, contact us today. We’ll do everything within our power to keep your child safe and free from a lingering criminal record.
Posted 25th June 2018 by DeVore Criminal Defense