Decriminalizing Status Offenders in Wyoming: Where Do We Stand?

by Tom Rose

In 1974 the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) was passed mainly for the purpose of deinstitutionalizing juvenile status offenders. Most states initiated the act over the next few decades. Wyoming did not.

Last week wasn't the first time I've run into stories advocating for harsher treatment for juvenile offenders. In all fairness, the story out of Oregon was shocking and horrifying but even with the indications of poor management of their juvenile probation program it does not prove that all kids should be locked up no matter how minor the infraction.

Since Wyoming is the last remaining state has not adopted the tenets of the JJDPA, we can take the time to examine things that have occurred in other states.

A 1996 article out of the American Bar Association discusses problems that states have had in dealing with status offenses.

The ABA article describes the 1970s as an era of deinstitutionalization of status offenders. The article claims that as of the writing in 1996, community challenges were arising with claims that the deinstitutionalization had not worked and that runaways and truants must be more tightly controlled "…for their own protection…"

Basically the way that the argument seems to go is this: If we cannot lock these juvenile up for the behavior that neither we the parents, we the schools or we the law enforcement officers can make them stop, then we have no tools to make them stop. That may seem like a ridiculous abstraction of what surely must be more significant problems, but that seems to be the tone of the ABA article.

Another argument in this legal article appears to indicate that several states that were studied by unnamed child advocacy organizations found that:

Several studies have found that, as a result of state deinstitutionalization laws, children who could no longer be detained were being recycled or "relabeled" as delinquent offenders so they could be housed in secure facilities.13 A troubling and related finding is that some minors no longer subject to detention as status offenders were being committed involuntarily and inappropriately to in-patient drug treatment facilities and psychiatric hospitals.

The ABA article is worth reviewing for the historical perspective on the impact of deinstitutionalization of status offenses. Another interesting finding is how closely entwined the decriminalization of status offenses and CHINS or FINS legislation is.

Last year we discussed some legislation that was being proposed by the Wyoming Department of Family Services. This legislation was proposing to replace the Wyoming CHINS program with a FINS program. Before we refresh our memories with some terminology let's get a handle on how this fits in. Back in 1974 when status crimes were largely deinstitutionalized by the federal government, this left misbehaving children in a gray-area. As mentioned before, these children were committing behaviors that all concerned: parents, teachers, administrators, law enforcement, wanted halted. Now these behaviors were no longer strictly speaking, criminal. This is where some states brought in the concept of CHINS or child in need of supervision.

The Child Welfare League of America produced a 2014 study of Massachusetts's reform efforts including a battle against an overgrown and counterproductive CHINS program.

"The CHINS statute instead created an adversarial system in which the child was often pitted against his or her parent in front of a judge. Parents were encouraged to file a CHINS petition to receive help for their children, but the process and the very real potential that the parent would lose custody of their child was never adequately explained, leaving these families with a wound that often could never be repaired. For decades, neither parents nor children had the right to speak on their own behalf, and parents were not allowed to stop the petition once it was set in motion. After the CHINS petition was filed, the child was assigned a probation officer; an agreement would be drafted that would lay out specific steps the child would have to complete to end the petition, which could continue indefinitely or until the child turned 18.

These families went to the courts to receive help for their children. What their children received instead was a probation officer, a stigma, and a direct path into the prison pipeline. According to Massachusetts juvenile court records, more than 9,000 children between age 6 and 17 were funneled through this system annually."

So we need to be careful as we contemplate how to get rid of an unwanted law (status offences for minors) without inadvertently shoving an even worse one through. With this serving as an introduction we'll take a closer look at this year's CHINS/FINS legislation, hopefully with enough time remaining to prevent the passage of another law which will do great disservice to Wyoming's children and families.