At what age can a child be delinquent?

....and other child welfare news for August 7, 2024

Two recent incidents in Georgia and Washington involving wrongdoing by young children raises afresh the question: at what age can a child be held responsible in juvenile court for serious wrongdoing?

The first case involves a May incident down in Jesup in which an 8-year old drowned and two children, ages 10 and 11, have been charged in connection with the tragedy. The older child’s charges include involuntary manslaughter. In the second, a 7-year old boy in Seattle was accused late last month of threatening teenaged girls with a hatchet.

Our juvenile justice systems are a response to society’s recognition that children should not necessarily be held to adult standards if they do something that is otherwise a crime. That recognition is age-old. In ancient Rome, prepubescent children were often deemed incapable of forming criminal intent. At common law, children under the age of 7 were deemed absolutely incapable of committing an act with criminal intent, and children between the ages of 7 and 14 were presumed incapable, with the prosecution required to prove the child was capable of comprehending his or her wrongdoing.

But with the advent of juvenile justice and the more “therapeutic” approach of juvenile courts over the past 125 years, these minimum ages have often been lowered or ignored on the basis that the juvenile court is simply correcting and helping, rather than punishing, the child. Most states have no minimum age requirement for a juvenile delinquency charge. Washington is one of those states. Its law, which applies to juvenile court proceedings, deems children under the age of 8 incapable of committing a crime and presumes incapable those between the ages of 8 and 12.

It may be time to revisit these old standards and determine if and when they should apply to juvenile court proceedings. In the Georgia case, for example, charges were filed against the children based on allegations that one of them may have pushed the victim into a pond during an argument, resulting in his drowning. Charges were filed only after lawyers for the victim’s family and community activists lobbied for the children’s arrest. Unconfirmed media reports state that the 10 and 11 year old children were required to put up bonds of between $5000 and $10000 or face juvenile detention. If true, such an order involving children that age would be highly unusual in Georgia. One has to question whether these charges juvenile court are intended as vengeance rather than to advance the purpose of Georgia’s juvenile justice system, which is to “protect the community, impose accountability for violations of law, provide treatment and rehabilitation, and equip juvenile offenders with the ability to live responsibly and productively.”

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In other news:

• New Mexico has struggled with high turnover among its child welfare caseworkers, with annual turnover rates that approached 44% in May, 2023. While the turnover rate has dropped to 36% more recently, there are concerns that problems such as hoteling of children are driving folks out of the profession.

• In New York, over 800 cases have been filed against private foster care agencies under the Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statutes of limitation for child abuse claims going years back. “In nearly 40 percent of those cases, the insurance claim at the time has been voided,” it’s reported. Yet another reason to order a copy of a certain forthcoming book whose pages will remind you to ensure your organization has insurance policies that will cover such historical claims.

• At the federal level, there seems to be movement on a number of child welfare issues.

  • Keep an eye out for HR 9076, which reauthorizes IV-B and has passed the Ways and Means Committee. Among its provisions, it appears it would prioritize funding for programs such as CarePortal and Family Resource Centers.

  • At a recent child welfare convening, the White House announced it will begin to allow FFPSA IV-E funds to be used for administering these prevention services. No details yet.

• Here’s an interesting series on Arkansas’ foster care system.

• The Fifth Circuit appears poised to slap Judge Janis Jack’s hand over her contempt order in the Texas child welfare litigation.

That’s all for today! Let me know if you see any issues that need to be included next week! And please share this post and consider becoming a free or, even better, paid subscriber!

Tom