Some kids making their way through Indiana's juvenile justice system are slipping through the cracks. They're supposed to get a public defender to help with their cases, but that doesn't always happen.
So, some kids are ending up in the Department of Correction when they shouldn't. And, oftentimes, it's for an incident an adult would never serve time in prison for.
It's a problem states across the country are facing because of a lack of resources and understanding of juvenile courts and crimes.
Some Indiana attorneys are trying to change the trend.
Juvenile Defense Project Aims To Ensure Kids Have Proper Legal Representation
Joel Wieneke is standing in front of a classroom at Logansport Juvenile Correctional Facility. Looking around, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between this room and a public school classroom. There are posters on the wall that talk about overcoming hurdles, and bookshelves lining one wall.
But, the boys sitting in the desks all sport the same shaved heads and gray sweat suits.
"Anybody else have any thoughts about why I'm here?" Wieneke asks.
He's talking to a group of boys who arrived here within the past week. They range in age from 12 to 17, and they aren't feeling especially talkative today. Wieneke's colleague passes out candy to encourage kids to participate in the discussion.
"Right now what we're going to do is talk as a group, but you guys got to raise your hand if you want to talk to me," Wieneke says. "We're going to try and figure out what you guys know about the system you just went through, how it is that you came to the DOC."
Wieneke isn't a teacher, but the post-disposition coordinator of the Indiana Public Defender Council's Juvenile Defense Project. The group developed a Memorandum of Understanding with the DOC to let attorneys visit two juvenile facilities in the state every other week.
"I've met with seven kids so far since last April who made it all the way here and didn't have an attorney, at least at one point in their case, when they probably should have."
Wieneke drives more than four hours round trip to make sure the kids who are serving time here had proper legal representation.
"It sounds like everybody in the room had an attorney, right?" he asks the group. "That's one of the things that I want to find out, is that you guys know and understand you had an attorney. I've met with seven kids so far since last April who made it all the way here and didn't have an attorney, at least at one point in their case when they probably should have."
It's hard to gauge how often that's happening in Indiana, because there's little statewide data available on juvenile defense.
The state itself collects little information on juveniles who go through court or end up in the DOC.
What we do know from judicial service reports is that about a quarter of juveniles waived their right to counsel in 2015.
The National Juvenile Defender Center worked with state task forces to complete an assessment of Indiana's system – but that happened more than a decade ago.
The analysis took information from 11 of Indiana's 92 counties, and points to issues with how and when attorneys are appointed to juvenile cases, and the high number of kids waiving their right to an attorney.
What Wieneke knows from his visits to Logansport is that some of those problems still persist.
"They show up at the Department of Correction oftentimes not knowing or understanding things that they should understand having gone through that process," he says.
Program Connects Some Kids With Appeals
Wieneke has no shortage of stories about kids who ended up in the DOC when they probably shouldn't have.
He estimates about 45 percent of the boys who sit through the group orientation request to meet with him one-on-one because they have questions about their situations.
Wieneke skims their case files quickly before they have a private meeting.
"I talked to a young man not too long ago who, after sitting through orientation, he wanted to meet with me one on one," he says. "And, he came in and he said I don't think I had an attorney. And so we had to talk through who were the people in the courtroom. And, the only thing he could say was the person in the suit with all the paperwork was sitting at another table."
Then there's the girl who lied to a police officer about her name, which would carry a maximum penalty of about 180 days in jail for an adult.
"She's been under court supervision for that offense for three years, had multiple probation violations for things such as skipping school," he says. "It's kind of hard to see that that's the hook, a B misdemeanor, to keep court supervision over her for three years."
Based on conversations like that, Wieneke connects some kids with an appellate attorney or the state public defender's office.
Amy Karozos is director of the IPDC's Juvenile Defense Project. She goes through a similar process at another juvenile facility.
"We've had about 400 kids go through the orientation," she says. "About 40 percent signed up to talk to us. After that, about 10 percent signed up for appeals."
The facility visits are just a portion of Indiana's plan for improving juvenile defense.
Attorneys are also going to counties to help them reform the way they deliver juvenile defense. And, there's an effort to give attorneys more juvenile-specific training.
"By the time the grant's expired, we hope to at least have done training for attorneys in every single county," Karozos says.
But, access to quality counsel isn't a problem unique to Indiana – it's happening across the country. The National Juvenile Defender Center says the practice of automatically appointing young people an attorney hasn't caught on. The NJDC's most recent report looks at juvenile justice in 21 states.
"67 percent of the states that we've been in, young people were not always waiving their right to counsel, but at least in some places were appearing at proceedings where their liberty interests were clearly at stake – detention hearings, adjudication hearings, disposition hearings – without an attorney by their side," says NJDC Executive Director Mary Ann Scali.
Scali says the problem is systemic, and the lack of funding and consistency in Indiana only compounds it.
"You look at the fact that there's no state level entity that provides leadership, oversight, monitoring, there's no mandatory standards for counties to comply with that demand that people have quality juvenile representation," she says.
That's in the back of Wieneke's mind as he talks to these kids.
Federal grant money supporting this program runs out next year, so he'll have to make his case to state legislators to support the program.
He says there's evidence to show their efforts are working. The DOC released a couple of kids early after Wieneke and Karozos discovered they shouldn't be there.
But, they're only dealing with a small number of the thousands of juvenile cases in Indiana.
"The reality is a very small percentage of kids who are processed through juvenile court actually end up in the Department of Correction. And, those are the kids that we're reaching right now," Wieneke says. "We're trying to reach out to residential placements and secure detention facilities, which is a step down from the department of correction, to encourage them to get kids in touch with us who may have an issue, but we just can't travel around and do this same orientation interview process at those facilities. It would take too much time."
For now, he'll keep making the trips to Logansport every other week – hoping it makes a difference.
