The kids are all right

Man, filling in at Juvy is a delight! Respect, no brow-beating, well-managed docket. The only downside was that it finished early enough that I had time to come back downtown and do the rest of my afternoon adult felonies.

The helping professionals at Juvy are so very nice, they all just want to help my office's clients, and of course they can't help my office's clients unless they've convicted them first. A regular juvy deputy of mine was told once, "your role is not to go to trial here, your role is to help the kids." And if it's "for the children," why not? Why, today Juvy was so full of loving kindness that they had more than enough to share with a poor little eight-year-old! And naturally, now that he's in the juvy system, they may never want to let him go!

(Sometimes I get such a kick out of my compassionate conservative neighbors. They talk a good game about individual freedom and families first, but when it comes down, the talk extends only about as far as their own kids. Their kids get the benefit of the doubt, and Those People's kids get Juvy and juvy records. Makes me nostalgic for the live-and-let-live Idaho of my youth, when a wayward teen with a twelve-pack might, if caught by a sheriff's deputy, be stood over with a flashlight while pouring out every last can of beer behind the Boise North stake center, then be ordered to go straight home. Or so I've been told.)

Update: E-mail from one of my former juvy deputies!

If I was the quoted individual in your blog, what I remember being told was the absolutely brilliant "Your job is not to win. Your job is to do what is in the best interest of the child, and that is getting him help." When I later had a case dismissed on a technicality, she yelled "*ssh*le! Now she can't get the help she needs". I've always wanted to get the record on that case.