Attorneys for juvenile offenders in Kansas lack proper training, support, report finds
A new report by the National Juvenile Defender Center shows that most juvenile defense attorneys in Kansas are not properly trained to represent their clients. As a result, many youth don’t receive the due process they are guaranteed under the Constitution.
While Kansas provides an attorney to stand beside most juveniles facing charges in delinquency court, it’s often not enough, according to an assessment published Wednesday by the non-profit based out of Washington D.C.
Juvenile defense attorneys often “do not provide the zealous, expressed-interest representation their young clients need and the Constitution requires,” according to the report.
One judge lamented the lack of support for attorneys defending juveniles next to the vast resources, by comparison, available in adult court.
“Kansas juvenile defenders work hard and want to do well for the kids they represent, but the structure to support their work simply does not exist,” Melanie DeRousse, director of the Legal Aid Clinic at Kansas University School of Law, said in a news release Wednesday. “There is a lack of centralized, effective, mandated—and funded—training and resources to position defenders to do their best for Kansas children.”
The 85-page report was published based off of interviews, court observations and research done by experts across 11 Kansas counties over the course of a year. It is the 28th report released so far by the center. The report on Missouri was published in 2013.
“Young people facing the legal system deserve a well-trained, specialized lawyer to advocate for their legal interests and against system harms,” Mary Ann Scali, the center’s executive director, said in the news release. “Kansas has no entity or policies in place to ensure juvenile defenders are prepared to defend youth against routine shackling, racially disparate outcomes, and unnecessary court contact.”
No mandatory training
Kansas is one of four states without a salaried public defense system to represent youth, according to the assessment.
Instead, the responsibility is left on individual counties to either appoint private defense attorneys in individual cases or to contract private defense attorneys or groups of defenders.
And there is no state oversight of the juvenile defense system or of its defenders, the report reads.
While continuing legal education related to juvenile justice exists through the state’s Office of Judicial Administration, it is not required that judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys working in juvenile court attend.
Between July 12, 2017, and August 31, 2019, only 38 members of the court system said they attended the juvenile court trainings, according to the report.
As a result, juvenile defenders in Kansas aren’t properly trained, supported or compensated in a way that would lead to them becoming experts in juvenile defense, according to the assessment.
This leaves Kansas youth without the representation they are guaranteed under the Constitution.
“Kansas has excellent law schools and very well-trained lawyers. But very few are trained to do juvenile defense work, and there is no system to provide support to or monitoring of the defense young people receive,” Judge Thomas Foster of Kansas’ 10th Judicial District said in the center’s news release.
Probable cause and expert testimony
Defenders rarely challenge probable cause in juvenile cases.
“There seems to be a presumption, by some judges and even some defense attorneys, that if a police officer claims something happened a particular way, that’s infallible,” one member of the center’s assessment team wrote in the report.
“It can’t be that I am just lucky and every kid charged is guilty,” one prosecutor told the center.
A showing in juvenile court can damage young people’s education, their family, their housing situation and their future employment opportunities, the report noted.
Most of the defenders interviewed as part of the assessment also said they rarely, if ever, used an expert, such as someone who studied child development or adolescent mental health who could strengthen their case, when defending their client.
“The only cases where you need an expert are serious cases like rape or murder,” one defender said.
Leaning on pleas, avoiding appeals
The report found that juvenile defense attorneys lean heavily on the plea process instead of gathering enough information to challenge the allegations against their youth client.
“In some areas, the defense contracting system may even incentivize expediting pleas and a lack of strong defense advocacy,” the assessment reads.
In one recent year, only 46 of more than 6,700 delinquency cases filed in Kansas courts went to trial.
There was also little proof of appeals. In 2019, 10 juvenile delinquency appeals were filed out of the more than 6,000 such cases
One prosecutor told the center that juvenile defenders “have no concept of the ramifications of a child’s adjudication on their future,” and therefore “deem these cases less important.”
Roadblocks to future success
Most of the time, defenders argued that their youth client should be released from detention, but only about half the time did they have a plan to back their argument, a judge said, according to the report.
Some defense attorneys said they wished the law still allowed youth to be detained “for their own good,” or “when they really need it, such as runaways,” even adding that detention is “not necessarily a bad thing.”
Youth and their family members often shoulder the fees, fines and costs of detention and of going to court. This is an unjust burden that can have financial repercussions on the youth and their family that outlast any punishment for their crimes.
Kansas in 2016 repealed a law that kept youth from being released from supervision early if they still owed fees. While that’s no longer the case, the debt they still owe can become financial barriers to success, the assessment stated.
“Families burdened by these obligations may face a difficult choice, either paying juvenile justice debts or paying for food, clothing, shelter, or other necessities,” the report read.
Little challenge to racial disparities
Racial disparities in the juvenile system are worse in Kansas than they are nationally, according to the report. Despite this, “juvenile defenders do little to challenge the biases driving these disparities and rarely raise racial justice arguments in their defense of youth.”
Even though the number of youth arrested in Kansas has decreased significantly in the last decade, the racial disparities among those arrested is increasing, the report read.
According to the assessment, indigenous youth in Kansas are 98% more likely to be referred to court than white youth. And Kansas’s Black and Latinx youth are 75% more likely to be arrested than white youth. The disparity nationally is significantly lower, at 30%.
Despite these racial disparities, those within the Kansas court system who were interviewed by the center said that juvenile defenders “are doing little, if anything, to challenge the biases driving these disparities,” according to the report.
“Defenders must recognize their own vulnerability to the negative effects of implicit bias as they practice in a paternalistic system that is easily manipulated by perceptions of race and class,” the report concluded.
Solutions
The center suggested that the state of Kansas take several steps to help create a more just system for youth. These suggestions included creating a specialized system of juvenile defense and eliminating fines, fees and costs for the defendant in juvenile court.
They also suggested creating statewide standards with an oversight system to monitor progress and recommended creating a juvenile defense system that leads defenders to becoming specialists in youth defense. They also asked that a statewide resource center be created to support juvenile defenders.
The center also advised that courts automatically assign court-appointed attorneys to every youth so that they have an opportunity to meet and talk about the case before their first appearance in court, where many are often first introduced.
In addition, while 32 states have legal limitations on whether youth can be retrained in juvenile court, Kansas is not one of them. The center also asked that youth no longer be shackled in court.
Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Marla Luckert in the news release said she looks forward to reading the report and working to make improvements to her state’s juvenile justice system.
