Articles in the Juvenile Law category - Page 7 of 7

Did you know that in a juvenile delinquency court case the juvenile may be placed in the custody of a county’s child welfare department (usually a department of social services (DSS))? A DSS placement through a delinquency action may happen in one of three ways:

• a nonsecure custody order (G.S. 7B-1902 through -1907),
• a dispositional order after the juvenile has been adjudicated delinquent (G.S. 7B-2506(1)c.), and/or
• an order appointing DSS as the juvenile’s guardian of the person (G.S. 7B-2001).

With each of these types of delinquency orders, there is not an allegation, substantiation, or adjudication that the juvenile is abused, neglected, or dependent (see my last blog post, here, discussing  delinquency as it relates to abuse, neglect, or dependency). Instead, the juvenile’s court involvement is a result of his or her alleged acts of delinquency rather than circumstances created by a parent, guardian, custodian, or caretaker. Each of these three custody orders is a type of delinquency order and not an order related to a juvenile’s abuse, neglect, or dependency. However, at times, as a result of the order placing the juvenile in DSS custody, pieces of abuse, neglect, and dependency law apply in the delinquency case.

The legal implications of placing a juvenile into DSS custody and resulting foster care as part of a delinquency mat­ter are complex – so complex, that a blog post will not do. Instead, my colleague, Jacquelyn (Jacqui) Greene and I wrote a new extensive juvenile law bulletin discussing these orders and the issues that arise with each type of order. You can access the bulletin, Delinquency and DSS Custody without Abuse, Neglect, or Dependency: How Does that Work? here.

I have had the pleasure of working here at the School of Government for eight months now. In that time I have gotten some interesting questions about North Carolina’s delinquency laws. Most often, those questions relate to the confidentiality of juvenile court records. When I first read the statute – G.S. 7B-3000 – I thought it was an open and shut case. Unless you are on the list of people allowed access without a court order, access can only be allowed pursuant to a court order. But then the questions started to come in. Who exactly is the juvenile’s attorney under this statute? Can any prosecutor access juvenile records any time? Can a federal court order disclosure of a North Carolina juvenile record? On what basis can courts order release of juvenile records? It turns out that it’s not open and shut at all. Here is what I have learned so far.

The Indigent Defense Education group at the School of Government (SOG) in collaboration with Indigent Defense Services (IDS) held its 11^th annual Parent Attorney Conference on August 10, 2017. Parent attorneys represent parents in abuse, neglect, dependency and termination of parental rights (A/N/D) proceedings.

The conference includes three to four topics centered on a particular theme. It always includes an ethics session and a case law and legislative update. Examples of past themes are Representing Parents with Mental Health Disorders, Working with Non-Removal Parents, Representing the Chemically Dependent Client, and Defending Complicated Medical Cases.

Collaboration at Its Finest When I think of effective collaboration, I think of Kiesha Crawford, manager of the Juvenile CIP at the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts. She […]

“We are not criminal defense lawyers. We are civil rights lawyers because being a criminal defense lawyer is kind of limiting”. (Alex Charns, Attorney, Annual Contractor and Assigned Counsel Training, UNC School of Government June 2016).

Considering all the many issues clients present with, referring to ourselves as only a specific type of attorney, such as a juvenile or family law attorney, does seem limiting. Representing people in any area of law requires more of attorneys, especially as they begin to address the multitude of social, health, and economic challenges their clients face.

READ POST "You Need to Know More Than Just the Law (August 17, 2016)"

When a juvenile runs from North Carolina to another state or to North Carolina from another state, interstate procedures apply to facilitate the juvenile’s safe return to his or her home state. Recently, law enforcement officials in multiple North Carolina counties have encountered out-of-state runaways and yesterday, this topic appeared on one of the School of Government monitored listservs. So, it seems like a good time to review what the Interstate Compact for Juveniles says about the legal process for returning these children to their homes.

Nearly five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided J.D.B. v. North Carolina, a case arising from the police interrogation of a middle school student in Chapel Hill. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that police officers must consider a juvenile’s age when determining whether they must read juveniles their Miranda rights before questioning them. The ruling represents a major shift in Miranda jurisprudence by establishing a different standard for evaluating police interrogations of juveniles – the reasonable child standard. In the years since J.D.B., however, lower courts have not clearly defined how the reasonable child standard impacts the assessment of whether a juvenile was “in custody.” The application of this new standard also raises questions about how North Carolina courts evaluate custody determinations in the school setting. These and other issues are addressed in detail in “Applying the Reasonable Child Standard to Juvenile Interrogations After J.D.B. v. North Carolina” (No. 2016/01).

In North Carolina, a 16 or 17 year old who has resided in the same North Carolina county for six months may petition the district court for an emancipation from his or her parents, guardian, or custodian.  According to statistics from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), there have been 986 emancipation filings between fiscal year 2007-2008 and 2014-2015, averaging over 120 cases a year.  Despite this number, there is a surprising lack of appellate decisions regarding juvenile emancipations. The lack of opinions has left both district courts and petitioners to figure out what the statutes require.