SECOND CHANCES 100 YEARS OF mE CHIWREN'S COURT! GMNGKIDS A CHANCE TO MAKE A BETTER CHOICE The Children's Court Centennial Communications Project A Joint Project of The Justice Policy Institute Children and Family Justice Center 2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE Northwestern University School of Law, Legal Clinic Washington, D.C. 20020 357 East Chicago Avenue 202678.9282/202678.9321 Fax Chicago,IL 60611 www.cjcj.org/jpi 312503.0396/312503.095.3 Fax www.law.nwu/edi/cfje www.cjcj.org/centennial Funded by generous grants from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Caver photos, from rap left: Andre Dawkins, Tel'cuee IIilllill.1u, S;llI" Hendel'soll and Derrick Thomas. Inside cover photos, frolll mp left: L11\~rence Wu, Df'Jloi$ Sweeny, Luis Rodriguez illld Ronald LlI:cv. Intt()~u'ction.,·~~~ ............. :~.•... ~~.=~ ... ~.·.~ .... ~ .................................................... 2 . Success.stories . .. IJ~trick·Thcilna;~~ ... ,; .... :;~:: ..• ::;;;" ...................................... ,.. :.6 .... .' .i:t:~;:~::~~:::::j:::::;:~:;l;~ :::j:~::::::::: :: :::::::::::: ::: :: ::::::::: ::::::::: ~~. Sally Henderson ...... ,;:;~C,: ... ;;,,"; ......... ;................................. ;.£L;< .. Chlude Bt6wri.;,:....... : .... :; ........ : ................................................ 27 Senator Man Simpson ........: ................................................ 33 Terry Ray.;............................................................................ 3 9 Luis Rodtiiguez ; ..•....... : .......... ;;; ............................................. .45 Terence HaHinan................................................................... 52 'Car6lynGabbar& ..... ~.;: ........................................................ 57 P~rcy Campbell .......... ,.................... , .................................... 62 Jeremy Estrada ............. : ........................................................ 68 Scott Filippi ...... , .................................................................. 71 Captain Jam.es. Short............................................................. 77 . Ronald Laney ........................................................................ 82 Joseph Julian ........................................................................ 87 Honorable Reggie B. W.'llton ............................................... 92 Jay Kilheen.ey ........................................................................ 98 Jason Smith ....................................................................... 103 Dennis Sw\}eny' .............. ; ..................................................... 107 Ron AsIlley.................. ; ... ; ......;· ...... ;; .......................................;.:113 .. · Brian Si'Iv\'rmul). ....... ; .• ,.L.;.; ..••. ;; .......... ;: ............................. '118 Brandon Maxw\'ll< ...•.• : ......... :.............................................. 122.·. Andre Duwldns; .........................:; .•. ; ....................... ; .............. 126 Carletta Nichols ........... ;;.: ......;.; ......................................... 133 Afterword by Marian Wright Edelman... .....• ' ..' . President andFoundel'ofth~dhiri!j:en's Defense FumE ............ : ... 139·. INTRODUC'I10N hey're prosecutors, politicians, poets and probation officers; academics, attorneys, athletes T and authors; students, stockbrokers and sales people; football players and firefighters. They've worked at the highest levels of government, as advisors to pt'esidents and in the US Senate. They've prosecuted, defended and judged their fellow men and women. They've achieved unprecedented feats on the field of athletic competition. They've served their country honorahly. And when they were kids, everyone of them was in trouble with the law. But for the protections and rehabilitative focus of the Juvenile Court ··a uniquely American invention that was the brainchild of a grou p of Chicago women activists in the 1800s - many of them would simply not be where they are today. And most of them would be the first to admit it. America's Juvenile Court celebrates its lOOth anniversary this July 3. In 1882, John Altgeld, an aspiring young lawyer who would later become governor ofJllinois, toured the House of Corrections in Chicago and discovered that hundreds of children, including children as young as eight years of age, were jailed alongside adults. Appalled by the tragic circumstances of these children, other Chicago reformers like Jane Addams, Lucy Flower and Julia Lathrop pushed state lawmakers to create a separate justice system for children. Before women could vote and while segregation was still the law of the land, their efforrs led to the creation of the first juvenile court in the world, which opened its doors on July 3,1899, not far from Addams' Hull House on Chicago's West Side. The court was just the first in a series of century-shaping reforms inspired by the work of the Hull House womell, including mandatory universal education for children, child~labor laws and the development of parks and recreation spaces for children. Addams and the other Chicago reformers helped to redefine "childhood," creating a new vision of childhood as a sacred period in human life, a period during which children and adolescents required the nurturance and guidance of responsible adults. No longer were children viewed as 1I 1nini.. adults;" they were qualitatively and developmentally different from adults. These differences made them both less culpable for their actions and more amenable to intervention than their elders. To these reformers, the last thing a civilized society should do to its children was to process and punish them like adults in the criminal justice system. They believed that the State had a moral responsibility to act as "kind and just parents" to each of its children. In the context of a court system, this meant that children should receive individualized attention, under the watcllful eyes of trained and sensitive judges and probation officers, in a system premised on rehabilitation rather than on the crippling punishments of the adult ,>,stem. In addition to delinquent children, the first juvenile court catered to the needs of abused and neglected children as well. Court proceedings were informal, non-adversarial and closed to the public: The stigmatizing language of the criminal court was r<'jected, and court records were eventually made confidential to protect children from long-term damage to their future prospects. The reformers' ideas spread like wildfire, leading to the development of juvenile courts in 46 states,3 territories, and the District of Columbia by the year 1925. America led the world with its 4 Second GMnces more hunlane approach to juvenile crime as well. By 1925, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Hungary, Croatia, Argentina, ,Austria, India, the Netherlands, Madagascar, Japan, Germany, Brazil and Spain had all established separate court systems for children. Today, every st.:1.te has a separate court system for children, as do most nations throughout the world. In cOlnmC1TIOration of the Court's Centennial, the Justice Policy Institute and Northwestern University School of Law's Children and Family Justice Center undertook to profile 25 individuals who had gone through the court when they were younger, who had turned their lives around and made something of themselves. This book is the result of that work. As individuals who work directly with youth in trouble with the law, we know that many young people (not to mention many older people) are guilty of youthful indiscretions that do not permanently inhibit their capacity to live successful lives. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Research has shown that the vast majority of people commit crimes at some time or another during tlleir youth and the vast majority of us stop doing so as we mature. So, while we expected to find a broad array of former delinquents-made-good, what we ultimately discovered surprised even us. Terence Hallinan had gotten into so much trouble for fighting when he was a teerwger that he was literally banished from his home county_ He eventually channeled his pugnacious ways into an alnateul~ boxing career, and then became, in the words of one local newspaper, "San Francisco's Fighting District Attorney_" Jeremy Estrada fell into the gang lifestyle in Los Angeles, but when he turned himself in after being chased by police, he got a second chance fr01n the juvenile court and was sent to a wilderness challenge program in Nevada. Today, the 23-year-old is a premed student at Pepperdine University in Southern California. When Alan Simpson pled guilty to charges of destroying federal property at the age of 17, no one could have guessed that he would one day have a 20-year career working on federal propert-y. The one~time delinquent went on to a term in the US Senate spanning several decades. A, a teenager, Judge Reggie Walton was repeatedly dragged in to local police stations for getting into fights in neighboring schools. During one fight, Walton wllS surprised when one of his friends pulled out a knife, stabbed and almost killed a boy. Walton, who was not directly involved in the stabbing, was still allowed to at'tend college (on a football scholarship) and then law school. He later became a federal prosecutor, was the nation's fitst Deputy Drug Czar and is now a Superior Court Judge in the District of Columbia. When Bob Beamon was 16, he turned away from a life of petty crime and gang