A study by this newspaper of Ohio Supreme Court statistical reports shows a steadily decreasing juvenile case load. Local statistics show the Butler County Sheriff’s Office juvenile case referrals to court dropped 42 percent, Hamilton’s fell 40 percent and Middletown experienced a 14 percent decline between 2005 and 2009.
Juvenile justice experts are both crediting the dismal economy for the downturn in cases and blaming it for what they say the future holds – an eventual rise in teen crime.
Butler County Juvenile Court Judge Ronald R. Craft said the largest segment of juvenile delinquency crimes are attributed to truancy. The economy has spurred high unemployment, so more adults are home now, curtailing the odds of their children breaking the law.
“It’s hard to commit crime when you’re a juvenile with a lot of people watching,” he said. “If you look at our drop, it really started in 2008 when our economy started getting bad.”
There are numerous categories of cases that fall under the juvenile courts jurisdictions. Warren County Juvenile Court Judge Michael Powell explained that an unruly child is one who breaks rules, a delinquent juvenile is one who breaks the law.
“It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be disorderly conduct or murder, if it’s committed by a person under 18 years of age and they are prosecuted as a juvenile, it is referred to as a delinquency offense,” he said.
The eased case load was a Godsend, according to Craft. Budget reductions in his department have cut $3 million and 37 employees in the juvenile justice division over the past three years. He said they have learned to “think out of the box” and deal with the economic times.
“If we had the filings that we had then, with the budget and people we have now, we couldn’t function,” he said.
The other side of the coin is what depleted budgets will do to juvenile crime in the future. Officials say lower juvenile cases are “victims” of the poor economy because law enforcement isn’t making as many arrests and school resource officers are one of the first reassignments police departments have had to make.
Hamilton Police Chief Neil Ferdelman said budget constraints mean juvenile crimes will rise, because his officers have less face time with the community.
“We’re down 37 people compared to where we were a couple years ago that makes a very big difference on our abilities to respond and to do some of the quality things we used to do,” he said. “We used to have lots of community policing, lots of officers in the schools and that’s all gone. We haven’t yet reduced our street presence, but a lot of the things that some skeptics would say is just feel good, warm and fuzzy policing, but I think it makes a very real difference.”
The same holds true for Middletown, according to St. Scott Reeve. They lost a school resource officer this year and a juvenile detective in the past couple years. He said the school resource officers do “cite juveniles to court” not for serious crimes, mainly persistent fighting or smoking if they fail to complete the school’s programs that deal with that vice.
“School resource officers do make quite a few arrests on juveniles,” he said.
Ironically, school stationed police were the cause of a spike in juvenile court arrests in the 1990s, according to Jill Beeler, chief counsel for the Juvenile Division of the Ohio Public Defender’s Office.
She said there were not necessarily more crimes by minors, but fights and such that were previously handled in-house by school officials were resulting in court case filings. She said they termed it the “school to prison pipeline.”
More recently, Beeler said, legislators are learning kids are not mini-adults and they should be handled differently. Hence, when the legislature passed a measure that changed sentencing standards earlier this year — House Bill 86 — a portion of the enactment also called for the creation of a task force to examine the juvenile justice system and mental health issues that may prompt these crimes.
“This tough-on-crime era that we went through is starting to shift,” she said. “For example House Bill 86 is meant to devise policy that’s not based on fear or bad decision-making, but based on what we’re learning about kids and crime and about development and all those things, as opposed to just that lock them up mentality.”
Steps the courts and others in the system have taken can also be credited for the case decrease. Craft said the county has a very aggressive truancy program and the consequences for parents are likely leading in part to the drop in truancy numbers. Parents are landing in jail now if their kids skip school.
In Warren County, Powell said juvenile traffic offenses have dropped 45 percent since he instituted a 30-day mandatory license suspension for serious speeders, even if it’s a first offense, in 2002.
Craft and Powell say they think the entire system has worked hard to reduce the number of court cases.
“I’d like to think also some of the these numbers are going down because we’re doing a good job,” Powell said. “That our police are doing a good job, prosecutors are doing a good job and we do a good job here at the court of holding our young people accountable and also giving them the types of remedial services that are necessary.”
Contact this writer at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.
About the Author