An Outsider’s View of Wyoming’s Failed Juvenile Justice System: Our Problems Are Bigger Than You Think

A recent article in the Wyoming Law Review by graduate criminal justice fellow Brice Hamack from California's Santa Clara University School of Law clearly defines how Wyoming's juvenile justice practices are violating juveniles' due process rights. Mr. Hamack weaves his well-referenced article with legal precedence, constitutional law and case law citations, repeatedly proving his case that many states are regularly violating the rights of juveniles with no apology and no consequences for the systems and authorities involved.

This article is an important one, but its presence in the Wyoming Law Review is disturbing for a number of reasons. We began examining Wyoming's struggling juvenile justice system in early 2013. It rapidly became clear that the system is so dysfunctional that it is difficult to conduct a conversation with juvenile justice experts outside the state without inadvertently stalling the conversation. In Wyoming we regularly commit so many egregious violations of the rights of juveniles that the conversations stall upon the realization that basic decency in the treatment of juveniles outsiders expect is not even a goal of the Wyoming system.

Hamack's 54 page article outlines the problems and violations as they have arisen in states other than Wyoming. Many of these violations arose as street-level loopholes-developed by prosecutors and judicial systems whose members privately believed the carefully developed federal guidelines for dealing with juveniles were too soft. What Mr. Hamack fails to recognize is that even in a national environment rife with states taking advantage of legal loopholes and depriving juveniles of their rights, Wyoming stands alone.

• Wyoming is the only state that has never reformed its juvenile justice system so that it was even nominally adhering to the federal standards of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (JDPA).
• Wyoming does not have enough juvenile courts to try all juveniles in separate juvenile court proceedings
• Wyoming does not ensure that all juveniles are tried in front of qualified juvenile judges
• Wyoming is the only state in the union that has not decriminalized status offenses.
• Wyoming regularly tries juveniles in adult court without any statutory waiver process
• Wyoming regularly imprisons juveniles in adult jails with adult offenders
• Wyoming authorities regularly imprison juveniles in secure facilities in the absence of any criminal charges or adjudication

The situation in Wyoming is clearly more egregious than any of the circumstances outlined, described and vilified in the Hamack piece. Nevertheless Mr. Hamack has written a compelling article and it provides an opportunity to explain in fine detail how Wyoming's issues with juvenile justice are fundamentally different from problems with juvenile justice systems in other states.

For ease of consideration we will split this analysis into three blogs. Wyoming has poured millions of dollars into reforming the juvenile justice system, in part because we persistently fail to understand how our present system impedes and derails every reform effort. Comparing realities in Wyoming with problems in juvenile justice as described in Mr. Hamack's article is an opportunity to approach the conversation of juvenile justice reform from a fresh angle. With better understanding of the unique nature of the landscape of juvenile justice in Wyoming we will have a much better chance of affecting real change.