Pre-Arraignment Detention of Juveniles

A report by the Children's Law Center and Harvard that examines the duration of juvenile detention pre-araignment has just been released. Read about the report (here).

I was fortunate enough to get to work with some of the early numbers at the Children's Law Center two summers ago. The data is startling. The children are held -- with no chance for bail -- for a long time. Sometimes the children are held over the weekend. In even more extreme cases, the children are held (without having had any sort of hearing or rights to be heard) over a holiday weekend.

If a young lady, for example, was picked up on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving -- theoretically, she could be held until the following Monday. That would be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday until she could get before a judge.

This is unacceptable. These youths may have committed some offence -- but they also may not have. As the article in the globe indicates, there needs to be more education and attention paid to this issue.