Experts Examine Judicial Trends In Dealing With Juvenile Violence Court, Social Dimensions Examined At Gu Law School Conference

Juvenile Court Judge Neal Q. Rielly stood before a convention crowd Saturday and told a story about a father who asked for leniency for his son.

He’s a good kid, the father said.

“Ninety-five percent of them are good kids,” Rielly said to the crowd. It’s just that some of the kids are broken.

“They’ve been beaten, raped. They are kids we’ve created,” Rielly said.

But if a juvenile offender is a danger to others, he must be dealt with by the court system, Rielly said.

Rielly spoke to a crowd of 80 people, mostly those who work with juvenile offenders, at an annual issue-oriented event sponsored by the Gonzaga University School of Law’s Thomas More Scholarship Program. Local and national experts gathered to discuss social and judicial trends in youth violence.

Pennsylvania law professor Barbara Bennett Woodhouse spoke about the increasing severity of punishment directed at juvenile offenders.

“How can a society who says it loves children be so willing to lock them up at such an early age?” Woodhouse asked.

She proposed a new kind of system to track and help young offenders. The interdisciplinary approach would use the schools of law, medicine and social work to make the difference. The system does not exist anywhere in the country at this point, she said.

Rielly spoke on local trends. Of the 50,000 people in Spokane County between the ages of 10 and 17, 96.5 percent of them do not commit violent offenses, he said.

It’s clear where the 3.5 percent of violent offenders learn their ways - in the home.

While preparing for a day on the bench, he’ll go through a stack of 40 to 50 juvenile cases. You don’t have to be a judge, lawyer or criminologist to understand where the problems originate, he said.

He spelled out a list of reasons for juvenile violence he and his staff put together.

Learned behavior, mental health issues and family dysfunction are often causes of youth violence. Drugs and alcohol often lead to domestic abuse, such as when a parent confronts a child who is under the influence, he said.

Poverty isn’t a direct cause, but it’s a condition where people have fewer resources to find help and hope, Rielly said.

Unsupervised groups of youth lead to problems. Weapons are a big problem, he said.

Violence in the media could be a cause, but Rielly said he had no proof of that.

Good kids can make mistakes and be fixed.

“We’ll write them off if we think they’re bad kids,” Rielly said.