Studies: Youth
punishment doesn’t always fit the crime
As Richard and
Gloria Habel tried to navigate the juvenile justice
system this year on behalf of their 15-year-old
daughter Elizabeth, a number of things caught them
by surprise.
The greatest shock,
however, came gradually, as they realized that
Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella and the
probation officers working on Elizabeth’s case were
not considering the alleged sexual assault against
her in deciding her punishment. She had been placed
on probation for a simple assault charge, and sent
away for probation violations.
“That judge
should’ve at least put Liz someplace where it’s more
of a setting to take care of her post-traumatic
problems with the rape,” Richard said, sitting in
his living room and rifling through mounds of
paperwork from the district attorney’s and juvenile
probation offices.
“Liz was acting out
because of what (James) O’Brien did to her, it
should be obvious. But no one wanted to talk about
that at any of her hearings – like it never
happened. They just wanted to send her away.”
Time and again,
Richard and Gloria have begged Ciavarella and the
caseworkers involved to let their daughter come
home, believing it to be the best environment for
her to heal and move forward. But Ciavarella has not
responded to the Habels’ pleas, and the caseworkers
who recommended Elizabeth’s sentence never once
mentioned the alleged sexual assault in any official
correspondence concerning her placement and
treatment program.
“We just want her
to come home,” Gloria said in a recent interview at
the family’s Plymouth home. “We have begged
Ciavarella, but he doesn’t want to hear from us; he
doesn’t want to hear about what Liz has been
through.”
The Habels said
when they realized their concerns were falling on
deaf ears they wrote the Times Leader in a final
plea for help. They wanted to tell Elizabeth’s story
to warn other parents, and also in hopes of getting
their daughter back. Toward that end, Elizabeth and
her parents signed a waiver to allow a review of her
voluminous juvenile probation file. Such documents
are normally kept strictly confidential; only a
judicial order from Ciavarella allowed a reporter
access to the file at the county probation office in
Wilkes-Barre.
Lengthy and costly sentences
Unlike the adult
criminal justice system, judges in the
Commonwealth’s juvenile system don’t hand down
uniform or finite sentences. In many cases,
punishments for juveniles end up being harsher than
they are for adults, with considerably longer
sentences, according to some studies.
According to
Rachael Lord, a researcher at the National Center
for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, juvenile
sentences are fluid and in some ways indefinite
because the ultimate goal is rehabilitation.
“Judges are
supposed to take into account all different factors,
including family, education and possible substance
abuse, which is why there are no sentencing
guidelines like there are for adults,” she said. “In
a perfect world, it’s designed so they can give the
juvenile the benefit of the doubt, but the state is
very fragmented because it’s county by county, so
each county’s juvenile court decides for itself how
to sentence.”
In many counties,
judges are increasingly sending juveniles to private
residential treatment facilities such as Vision
Quest that feature open-ended treatment programs.
The duration of an offender’s stay in such a program
depends on staff members’ evaluation of how well the
juvenile is faring.
In many cases, the
results are lengthy and costly placements. The
Habels say they have a bill of more than $3,000 for
Elizabeth’s three-month stay at Vision Quest.
According to a 2006 U.S. Department of Justice
study, juvenile offenders convicted of an offense
against a person – simple assault, for example –
were sentenced, on average, to 160 days in a public
facility or 145 days in a private facility.
The study, which
uses data from a 2003 census, reflects only a
juvenile’s placement at one facility. In many cases,
such as Elizabeth’s, in which the offender is moved
from one facility to another, it is difficult to
systematically determine how long juveniles spend in
the system. It is usually longer than the data
suggest.
Fitting punishment to crime
Elizabeth had never
been particularly rebellious or troublesome. But in
the spring of 2005 she was charged with simple
assault after throwing a rock that hit her next-door
neighbor. Elizabeth and her parents have maintained
all along that it was an accident. After more than a
year, they have not retreated from that claim.
Accidental or not,
the incident introduced Elizabeth to the world of
juvenile justice, where a single simple assault
charge for a first-time offender can carry an
ongoing sentence of random drug and alcohol tests,
strict evening curfews, and what amounts to
indefinite probation. After missing her 6 p.m.
curfew a few times, Elizabeth was required to wear
an electronic ankle monitor.
Several months into
her sentence, Elizabeth began to give up on it. As
autumn gave way to winter, she started ignoring her
curfew and hanging out with friends after school.
Around this time, she met O’Brien.
Asked whether he
takes such things into consideration when sentencing
a juvenile, Ciavarella – a judge known for handing
down harsh sentences to juveniles – said he
generally relies on the recommendation of probation
officers and the reports in the offender’s file. He
declined to comment on Elizabeth’s case.
Elizabeth’s file
contains a telling note by Dr. Frank James Vita from
a psychological evaluation he did on March 1. Vita
wrote: “The reported rape occurred prior to
Elizabeth violating her probation and the parents
believe this was the precipitant for Elizabeth being
‘drunk’ at school.”
But Vita goes on to
characterize the drinking incident at school as
“just one of many in which Elizabeth has violated
the terms of her probation.” He concludes by saying
the alleged sexual assault may have been a factor in
her acting out but that her probation violations
“are consistent with an overall self-destructive
pattern.” Vita recommended enrollment in a
residential treatment facility; he did not mention
the alleged assault in his official recommendation.
Such reasoning is
part of an overall approach to juvenile justice in
the Commonwealth, according to Lord: “Balance and
restorative justice are the principles under which
Pennsylvania operates. The main message is
accountability; juvenile offenders are supposed to
acknowledge their crime and be held accountable for
their behavior.”
Disparate treatment for girls
Amid this culture
of accountability, there is evidence that female
juveniles receive unequal treatment in sentencing
even as the proportion of female juveniles in the
system nationwide has slowly increased through the
years, from 13 percent in 1991 to 15 percent in
2003.
In 1999, Ciavarella
told a state commission researching bias in the
juvenile justice system that a lack of adequate
facilities for young women led to disparate
treatment between males and females during
sentencing and placement.
Ciavarella said the
demand for placement is so high that administrators
of private treatment facilities have the luxury of
handpicking offenders for their programs, leaving
more difficult females shut out from the best
facilities.
Among the
commission’s conclusions was that females are
brought into the system in increasing numbers
because of changes in law enforcement’s response to
their behavior. Family and social conflicts, the
commission said, are often associated with female
involvement in the juvenile justice system, which is
not the case for males.
“Once in the
system, females have few facilities available to
them,” the commission reported. “And those that
exist are ill-equipped to treat the underlying
causes of delinquency.”
