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3 Duke F. L. & Soc. Change 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/dukef3 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS GIVEN AT THE DUKE FORUM FOR LAW & SOCIAL CHANGE SYMPOSIUM OUR YOUTH AT A CROSSROAD: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF JUVENILE ADJUDICATION PROF. JANE WETTACHt INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS Here at Duke Law School we have a Children's Law Clinic that represents children, often in cases related to their education. A number of years ago, in my role as director of that clinic, I got a call from a public defender who had represented a fourteen-year-old boy on a juvenile charge. The boy had been accused of some type of sexual contact with his four-year-old step-brother. For a variety of reasons, it had taken the juvenile system a year from the time of the alleged offense to resolution. The boy had been adjudicated delinquent, but was not incarcerated. During that year between the incident and the adjudication, he had been attending public school without incident. Upon adjudication, the juvenile court counselor did what North Carolina law required him to do: he reported the adjudication to the juvenile's school. In response, the principal called the juvenile to the office and told him that he was no longer permitted to come to school. Just like that, his education was cut off. That was my first case involving the collateral consequences of juvenile adjudication. I didn't know the term at the time, but it was not hard to see the impact. Technically, collateral consequences are the various penalties and disqualifications that individuals face by operation of law incidental to criminal conviction or juvenile adjudication. For adults, these can include restrictions on voting, prohibitions from running for office, deportation for immigrants, exclusions from certain types of employment, restrictions on where the individual can travel or what property he can own, and even indefinite involuntary civil commitment. For juveniles, these can include exclusion from school, loss of driving privileges, eviction from public housing, enhancement of future sentences, and long-standing losses of personal freedoms. More informally, collateral consequences are all the various impacts on children which result from their interactions with the juvenile system, including impacts on their family relationships, their education, their long-term employment prospects, and their mental health. Understanding the impact of collateral consequences is especially important given our society's heavy reliance on the juvenile court system to manage children's behavior. All of us have heard the stories of the kinds of adolescent t Clinical Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law, and Director, Duke Children's Law Clinic. 1

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