A comprehensive agreement reached last week by the U.S. Justice Department and St. Louis County Family Court will force reforms in the county’s faulty juvenile court system.
The consent decree mandates that the court double the defense counsel it has available, provide better training in working with juveniles to court personnel, incorporate probable cause determinations into detention hearings, adopt a standardized format for court hearings to ensure that children’s guilty pleas are entered knowingly and voluntarily, hold public meetings and properly collect court data.
A 61-page report by Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released in July 2015 showed that children in St. Louis County were being denied their constitutional rights by not being given access to lawyers and that black minors were discriminated upon by judges and prosecutors.
The report stated that black children were 2.5 times more likely than whites to be detained before trial. Black children were also 2.74 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to be placed in custody, according to the report. Approximately, 60 percent of the defense lawyers who represented youth in St. Louis County Family Court delayed entering case data after detention hearings – from seven days to 232 days late, according to the report.
“As a result of these delays, critical investigation opportunities are lost; witnesses are no longer willing or available, memories fade, and physical evidence useful to the defense disappears,” the report stated.
One of the major problems that the report highlighted is found throughout the St. Louis County municipal court system as well: the roles of court employees intertwine, causing a conflict of interest.
“The prosecutor is counsel for the probation officer, and the probation officer acts as both an arm of the prosecution as well as a child advocate,” the report stated. “These conflicts of interest are contrary to separation of powers principles and deprive children of adequate due process.”
Mae Quinn, the executive director at the MacArthur Justice Center in St. Louis and the former head of the Juvenile Law and Justice Clinic at Washington University, agreed with that assessment.
“I do continue to believe that the Missouri juvenile court system is conflicted and unconstitutional from top to the bottom given the separation-of-powers problem,” she told St. Louis Public Radio.
In November 2013, the DOJ began its two-year investigation. The DOJ examined more than 60 variables for nearly 33,000 cases resolved between 2010 and 2013 in St. Louis County Family Court.
According to the 31-page consent decree, St. Louis County Family Court “disagrees with and disputes” the DOJ’s findings on the court. In the four juvenile justice reforms the DOJ has conducted, St. Louis County has had the longest negotiation, with 16 months of deliberation.
Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told The Huffington Post that Missouri needs to start fixing its problems by investing greater resources into its public defense system.
Ben Burkemper, the St. Louis County Family Court administrator, said that it will cost St. Louis County approximately $135,000 per year to comply with the reform. He said the first year’s costs will come from the court’s budgeted savings, but the rest will come from St. Louis County revenue.
U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-St. Louis) called the agreement a “victory” for the juveniles who will encounter the justice system and “finally enjoy equal protection under the law, which should include an opportunity to make a fresh start.”
This story is published as part of a partnership between The St. Louis American and The Huffington Post.
