Juvenile’s Rights and Frequently Asked Questions

If your son or daughter has been charged with an offense, he or she has the right to:

·         Know what the charges are.

·         Remain silent.  No one can make him or her talk about the case.

·         Have legal representation.

·         Admit the charges

·         Deny the charges and have an Evidentiary Hearing before a Judge.  There is no right to a jury trial for juvenile charges.

·         Face and cross examine witnesses.

·         Present evidence in his or her own defense.

·         Testify if he or she wishes; however he or she does not have to testify.

·         Appeal the Judge’s decision. 

 How will this charge affect my child’s ability to go to college?

        Most young people seeking to attend college rely on Federal Student Aid to assist in paying for tuition. In some circumstances a conviction for drug possession or drug distribution may prevent your child from receiving Federal Student Aid. Fortunately, convictions that have been dismissed, and that occurred before a young person reaches age 18 or before he or she started receiving Federal Student Aid, do not prevent your child from receiving Federal Student Aid. www.fafsa.ed.gov. However, these cases must be dismissed to prevent any difficulties with federal financial aid. Please call for a free consultation to discuss dismissal and of your child’s case with me.



How will this charge affect my child’s ability to get into the military?

        The answer to this question varies depending on which branch of the Armed Forces your child seeks to enlist in. Generally, felony convictions make a person ineligible for military service. Also, persons who have any “significant” criminal history are ineligible for military service. The military does have a waiver process for applicants with criminal histories, but a waiver of ineligibility based on criminal history is not automatic. You should work closely with your recruiter and hire a good criminal attorney if your son or daughter is in this position.

 

Will a charge in Juvenile Court stay on my child’s record?

Not necessarily. There are ways that your child can keep a juvenile conviction off his or her record. First, if convicted, your attorney can negotiate an Informal Adjustment in your child’s case. Ultimately, this allows the judge to dismiss your child’s case upon the successful completion of his or her sentencing terms. If granted an informal adjustment dismissal, your child’s record will merely reflect that the crime has been dismissed.

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After hearing several questions about whether Idaho’s “rider” program, which incarcerates offenders in a special treatment program for a short time, then releases them on probation if they succeed or sends them to prison for their full terms if they fail, skews state’s incarceration rate as presented in the justice reinvestment analysis by the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center and the Pew Trusts, I quizzed Mark Pelka, the Justice Center’s director. His answer: Riders were only counted as incarcerated when they were actually behind bars, not when they were out on probation. The project’s figures showed that in Idaho, non-violent offenders spend twice as long behind bars as they do in the rest of the nation.

I also asked about sentencing reform, and its role in this project. The answer: The project didn’t even study Idaho’s sentencing laws, as far as the initial sentence that’s issued by a judge. “We have had calls from judges and many others to look more at sentencing,” Pelka said, but, “We did not shine a flashlight on that.” That was in part because Idaho’s sentencing laws don’t differentiate much within categories of offenses, leaving discretion to judges and making Idaho’s sentencing system more difficult to analyze. “Eighty-four percent of sentences are to probation or rider,” Pelka said. Then, 85 percent of riders get released on probation.

 But the project is recommending one major change to how sentencing works in Idaho: It’s calling for non-violent offenders to serve just 100 to 150 percent of their fixed terms behind bars. Currently, drug offenders in Idaho are serving 219 percent of their fixed terms; property crime offenders, 200 percent; and DUI offenders, 231 percent. The idea is to focus more on supervision of those offenders when they’re initially released from prison, to keep them from going back. “The big challenge for Idaho is the return-to-prison rate,” Pelka said. “Fifty-three percent come back in.”

In the project’s recommendations, policy option 2(D) calls for Idaho to “reserve prison space for individuals convicted of violent offenses, by regulating the percent of time above the minimum sentence that people convicted of non-violent offenses may serve.” To accomplish that: “Require that people sentenced to prison for non-violent offenses be paroled at a point between 100 and 150 percent of the fixed term and then be placed under parole supervision.”

That would be a big change. Even without making any changes in Idaho’s overall sentencing laws – under which judges now set both a fixed and an indeterminate term, such as two to six years, with the Parole Commission deciding how much of the indeterminate part the inmate serves – the project is predicting $255 million in savings for Idaho over five years.